The story of my heart

Is that a song title? It might be. Anyway, I still haven't even started writing my GUCH story, and only 33 (? maths isn't my strong point)days until the deadline. Actually, that is quite a while, maybe that's why I haven't started yet - not enough pressure. I am a bit appalled, though, that I can't think of anything to write about what has been a major part of and had a major effect on my life. It might be more a case of just not knowing what to pick out (see previous post on this subject). See I am procrastinating instead of getting on with it. Maybe if I wait until 29th July to start I will be more successful?

Or maybe the truth is that I don't actually know what to say because I don't know enough about it. I have always felt under informed, if that's the word, about my own medical history. I think this is because I was quite a small child when all the major things were happening, and I don't actually remember anything much about those early years. I think I might have subconsciously blocked out memories, because I seem to be able to remember a lot less about my childhood than other people can - or maybe I just know people with good memories! The things I vaguely remember (or think I do) are:

1. Being baptised in hospital, although it is apparently impossible for me to remember this as I was only a few days old at the time.'
2. Eating ice cream with a friend on the ward aged three?
3. My fourth birthday. Just after I left hospital after my operation I think. The nurses gave me a large cuddly mouse wearing a pinafore dress and mob cap, which I still have. She is called 'wobbly mole' even though she's not a mole, but she is quite wobbly.
4. Having a catheter put in and looking at my insides on a monitor.

Another reason I think my subconscious has been at work is my (sometimes quite extreme) reactions to any sort of even vaguely invasive procedure. Going to the dentist can be very embarrassing as I have a tendency to cry. I have found that humming helps, although I worry the dentist then thinks I'm insane. Having a blood test used to be the same, but I am now not so bad if I don't look at the needle. Having my ears examined at my regular check-ups (I had gromits - no not the dog) was a particularly dreaded activity. The doctor reminded me of Jerry Adams, but this wasn't why I hated going - I could not stand him poking his little sticks in my ears and I made sure he knew this! I felt sorry for the nurse, but not really for him. I cried, I whimpered, I tried to escape. This would not have been so bad if I had been aged three, but I was about 16-17 at the time. Thankfully I don't have to go there anymore.

Bizarrely, actually going to my heart check-up is the least stressful medical thing I have to do nowadays - maybe because I've done it so often. It takes a while because I have to have several tests - ECG, ultrasound and sometimes x-ray (used to be x-ray every time) and is very boring for the person who comes with me (if anyone does) as it involves a lot of waiting around. I have had to have an MRI scan which I have written about previously [summary, I panicked, got claustrophobic (not necessarily in that order!) and had to be let out. I never want to have one of those again]. I then had a CT scan, which was better even though it involved needles...ok, just one, but that was enough. You can also read about this in a previous post, if you would like to, but it's probably not very interesting! Before the MRI they attempted an endoscopy, but this was not a success as I reacted like I reacted to the Ear Man, but worse (aged 25).

Needless to say, I feel very silly when I react badly to members of the medical profession who are only trying to help me, but I just can't help the way I react. (Hence my idea that it's subconscious reaction to previous experience of medical procedures).

Usually with the check up I know what's coming, basically at least. More recently though, there has been talk of mending my leaking valve (again - the one I have now is a replacement) and I have a new consultant, as the beloved Rosemary Radley Smith has retired. She gave me some of her blood once! So, I may once again be heading into the unknown. RRS, as she is known (to me, at least), said I should have the valve repaired before I start having children (if I ever do), and although I don't know if we will, or even can, have children, I would like to have the valve sorted out - it would be one less thing to worry about. Well, I will see what the new person says in August.

I don't often talk about my heart. For one, as I said earlier, I don't really know what to say. For two (oops) I don't want people to think I'm making a fuss and implying they should feel sorry for me. Having said that, I confess there is a part of me that wants people to recognise that I have been through these things, and that I'm not being a wimp when I can't run to the train station or keep up with people going up hill, and that I'm not being completely unreasonable when I cry at the dentist's.

[Feel free to disagree!]

Change

As you will have noticed, avid readers [cough], I have changed the template. This one feels nice and summery...but what will I do in winter?! I wonder if this is related to women having to have one lot of outfits for winter and one for summer* - although I don't, so it can't be that.

*This does happen. My mum does it, and I am sure various people at work do too, judging by conversations had in the SCR.

Anyway, I hope you are not feeling too disoriented.

Template time

I'm getting to the stage where I feel like changing my template again. I go through this quite often, and have changed in once (it used to be Dots). I'm not sure why I go through these stages. Maybe I just like a change of scene now and again...Anyway, we'll see. It will depend on whether I can do the change without losing too much stuff!

I wrote my article for the Gazette. Ms Editor wanted me to add something I wasn't sure about, so we compromised. I hope it will be ok.

Broccoli

This weekend has been busy. I've been home (parents) and back, replete with parents, who have been to stay.

On Friday afternoon I (and Mr C) went home to attend two friends' Civil Partnership ceremony celebration, which was certainly a new experience! It was a great party - lots of people there so managed to catch up with a quite a few old friends, including one whom I've known since I was about eight but hadn't seen for ages. We were both in the church choir for years, but then she moved to another church, and when I left home we lost touch. It was good to catch up, although quite weird, as these things can be. Seeing my mum disco dancing was a rather odd experience as well! They had a great small big band (if that makes any sense) before the diso started. They were all friends of the happy couple, and played many of the classic big band numbers. I hadn't heard a live big band for years, and I really enjoyed it.

Yesterday we went to see grandparents, then travelled back home (our house) in dad's car. I don't know why, but I really don't like long car journeys. I enjoy driving myslelf (in my lessons), and short journeys are fine, but long ones are definitely not. I think I worry about getting lost and I am not in control of the car! I am such a control freak! EEEEEEK.

We made it back without incident and sat about for a bit, then mum and dad wanted to help with the garden - honestly, we didn't make them do it! - so we went out and weeded. The effect of this was that we are now left with about four plants and a lot of bare, dry earth! But at least the plants that are there now are 'real' ones and have room to grow now the weeds are out. The weeds were massive tall things with yellow flowers, which were quite pretty, but did block the view of everything else. We discovered we have a fusia and a campanula, and it will be nice to see them bloom. We're not allowed to plant anything in the garden, as we're renting, but we're hoping to get some pots or tubs, and stand them in the soil, so at least it won't look so bare, and will add more colour. I've been watching gardening programmes on tv, which is a bit disturbing, but I find them very relaxing. I can see why people like gardening. I think I'll like it more once I know what I'm doing. At least I now know everything now in the garden is not a weed!

Mr C cooked a lovely curry, which had broccoli in it.

This morning I woke up and felt angry. But why? I do not know. Sometimes I do. I felt grumpy and unhappy most of the day, although better when H and husband popped round for a visit. I wasn't too bad after that. I don't know why I get in these moods, there certainly wasn't any particular reason today. Maybe I slept weirdly or something. Maybe I am just odd. I feel sorry for Mr C who always gets the worst bits of me at such times.

Also in the news...I ironed, did the washing, washed up, put the washing out and made dinner (tuna pasta - my hands now smell of garlic).

Money for old rope

A guy called Paul Youngson has come up with a great idea for raising money for charity. He started with a piece of old rope, which he then traded for some lots of pairs of children's scissors (strange item!), and then he traded the scissors for an official's shirt from the Sydney Olympics. Paul hopes to go on trading items for 18 months, until he auctions his final item to raise money for GUCH - Grown Up Congenital Hearts. GUCH provides support to adults who have congenital heart defects. You can see the link to his blog in my all new Blogroll on the right, or click here.

Heavy books

Today a student came to the desk, dumped her books on the desk and said "These books are very very overweight...overdue!"

A calmer day

After the stress of yesterday today was very calm, and people were happier. We had our team meeting and discussed things, and learnt some stuff about future developments. We found out officially where S and I are going to move to when we move offices, so that was good.

Yesterday, in between everything else, I had my second session of recruitment and selection training. Like the first session, it was very interesting and useful - more interesting that I expected before I started the training! You can read about it on my other blog, if you're interested.

I've written to my mentor, following my attendance at the chartership training, but no reply yet, which is a bit worrying. I will find it annoying if she is someone who takes ages to reply to emails.

In other news, I've been asked to write an article for the CILIP Gazette, and the deadline is next week, so I'd better get on with it!

Sigh

Urgh. Today has been one of those days when people have been upset over something relatively trivial, but which has ripples of repercussion that slop out and upset people. To cut a long story short, lots of people got upset because of lack of communication. Again. I hold myself [in]directly responsible for people being cross/upset, but it is too complicated to try to explain.

I went to see the Big Boss, and was upset in his office, which is very embarrassing in hindsight, but I couldn't help it at the time. He said I made the right decision in the circumstances, and that I shouldn't have been asked to do it, but I still wish I hadn't done it.

The problem (and adding to my guilt) is that I could see the potential consequences to a certain extent. I just hoped they wouldn't happen and was trying to do the right thing at the time.

People are unhappy and we are having a meeting tomorrow, so we'll see what happens then.

I don't know what the point of writing this is. It just looks like a load of cryptic nonsense.

I hate library politics.

Training

I've been on a couple of training courses in the past few days. The first thing was on Wednesday evening, when I went to the Preparing for Chartership course held at CILIP HQ in London. It was a bit of a pain that it was in the evening, after work and therefore at a tiring time of the day, but I got the train and found the venue ok. I had some trouble with escalators on the Untergrund (U-Bahn). This often happens, mainly on down escalators. I think it's to do with vertigo, which I don't have when I'm on/in tall buildings, but do on stairs without handrails (can't do them), and escalators. Weird. Anyway, fortunately, there were also some stairs (avec handrail), which isn't always the case, so I got to where I had to go.

For a full report of the chartership training please see my notebook. Oops sorry you can't do that, so please see my chartership blog. I started it on a different blog hosting thing because I wanted to be able to keep some bits private, in case I had to say bad things about anyone. Not really, it was more because I might want to mention people by name so that I can remember what on earth I was doing at the time, and I don't really like doing that when other people can read it. As far as I know there is no privacy function on Blogger. If you know differently please let me know! The other blog will (hopefully) act as a diary to record events, training, incidents. meetings etc relevant to the chartership process and also be somewhere where I can write my reflections on these things (which, as I learned on Wednesday, is a very important part of the process).

Regarding the course, the gist is that it was very useful and I'm glad I went.

The other training was yesterday, which was in-house training on recruitment and selection. This was also very worth while. The course leaders did well to make the subject less dry than it might have been, and it was definitely useful given the current changes happening within the library here. I will write a more detailed report about it in the chartership blog soon (I hope).

Blogger seems to be working ok again, so I will try and reload Bob tonight!

Pigeons

I can hear the wood pigeons cooing in the trees outside. The sound always reminds me of home. It also reminds me of my mum, who says she would like to catch one of the pigeons and put it in a pie. I am not sure that you would actually get much meat from a poor pigeon, and I wouldn't want to eat one anyway, but still she is determined. One day, I think she will train the cat to catch one specially for her pie-making endeavour.

Monday, Monday

Today at work was quite Mondayish.

New experiences are on the horizon. I am going to have training in recruitment and selection next week, and then I'm going to be helping recruit and select new desk staff. I am a bit scared, as it is not something I have ever done before, but it will be really good experience and interesting, I expect. Hopefully I will feel more confident once I have had the training.

The Big Boss is currently thinking about how jobs in our team are going to be redistributed once the integration has happened. He told me about his ideas so far, which sound reasonable. I'm going to a meeting about it on Wednesday with the Librarians. This is good as at least I will be able to imput into the decision making process (aghh management-squeak alert) on behalf of the team. D, if you are reading this, yes he did say we would all meet as a team to discuss the plans before anything is definitely decided!

I hope I'm never going to turn into a manager who uses management words (although I fear I probably already use them, and I'm not even a real manager). When I was doing my library course I was really against learning about management because I wanted to be a traditional librarian (whatever one of those is - probably non-existent!). However, we had to take management as a core course, and despite my protestations it actually became my favourite module, mainly because the lecturer was excellent. It also gave me my best marks, which helped me like it I suppose! I enjoyed the psychology side of it, but I still hate the language and the thing about seeing people as resources and treating them accordingly. I know people are a resource, in the sense that they are necessary to the workings of an organisation, but they're not a resource like a computer or a table. This may sound obvious to you, but I don't think it is so evident to some people in the higher echelons of some organisations. [NB this does not refer to the organisations I currently work in. I refer to my envelope opening days only].

Please don't sack me I like my job. I just learnt how to spell echelon. I am so pleased.

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours...

I had a really dull weekend, the 'highlight' of which was going round to ask the neighbours to turn down their TV. It took three attempts before I dared to actually ring their doorbell. Attempt one: I went to the end of their drive but heard them shouting and then lost my nerve and went back home. Attempt two: I went for a pretend walk around the corner and then turned round and went home. Somebody in the street told me to cheer up as I walked past. I hate it when people do that.I went home and cried. Anyway, attempt three: first I wrote a note then I went and rang their doorbell. Mrs Next-Door answered, and I asked her if they could turn the TV down a bit, and she said that was perfectly alright, twice. Then I went back home.

I think I should write my GUCH story about how being ill as a child makes you oversensitive. But of course I don't know whether I would be oversensitive anyway. But I think it's an interesting idea, and other people might as well. Maybe?

Chartership update

Oops that last post was a bit long. I am going to go on a 'Preparing for Chartership' training course next Wednesday. It's in London, and in the evening, so I might get back quite late. I wasn't sure whether to wait and see if there is going to be one held in the daytime, but my mentor wants me to go on one before we meet, so I thought I should go as soon as possible. I did attend a course last year (maybe the year before that now!), when I was in my old job, but that was when I was applying under the old regulations. I also have to look at my Personal Professional Development Plan (more concisely known as PPDP) and update it and change things as appropriate.

It's really cold in here. Can't believe it's June! Brrr.

Wedding report

I've realised that I didn't post about the wedding we went to on Saturday. It was in North Wales, which meant a long journey on the train. It wasn't too bad on the way up, as there was only one change in London (excluding the Underground), although we did have to stand/squat in corridor from London to Crewe, which wasn't so much fun. I bought a book at Euston though, so at least I had something to do.

Anyway, Rhyl was Rhyl-like - i.e. cold, smelly with scary people fighting on the street. Sorry to anyone who is from Rhyl, maybe I just haven't seen the nice side.

The wedding was very nice though. The usual university people reunion (but slightly different people to the ones at the last wedding, although some were the same). The service was quite unusual in that they had a really short marriage bit, and then lots of lively worship songs and even a dance performance. We had photos outside after the service, by which time the sun had come out. The reception was in the town hall, which was next door to the church, so that was handy. We had nice food and several long but entertaining speeches!

The journey back was ok, apart from a little hiccup in Birmingham. We had to go to Birmingham New Street, then change and walk to Birmingham Moor Street, which isn't very far, but we managed to get lost and I got stressed and shouted at Mr C in the street. I sometimes have these moments of rage, I'm not really sure why. I just felt it was unfair that we had got lost and decided to shout about it. I wasn't really shouting at my husband, more at the world. I am probably insane.

We made it home in the end though, but I remained upset until we went back to work on Tuesday. I didn't like having the day off on Monday, because I didn't know what to do. I ended up doing ironing and stuff though, so at least I made productive use of the day I suppose.

Anyway, here is a nice picture of Jen (the bride) with Ali and Berni at the reception. You can see the blurring on the right hand side of the photo. This was caused by me dropping the camera at a previous wedding. Oops. The man in the shop said I probably damaged the lens and the casing is buckled. The poor camera has gone away to be mended, which is going to take 4-5 weeks and probably cost about £80! Eeek! The warranty hasn't run out but I caused the damage. ) =

I also broke Bob the other day. He is a small china Boxer dog who sits on our window sill, and I knocked him off when I undrew the curtains. His leg fell off. Happily, he is now mended. Here he is, so you can see he's ok: