long time no blog!

I haven’t blogged for a while! I have had to keep my head down since BCgate! I fled the country for a week of snow, cheese and jaegerbombs. Aw it was such a perfect week only slightly blighted by J hand breaking his collar bone in some sort of furious bedroom antics with lawrence frost – I mean he told us he broke it skiing but he definitely can’t ski fast enough to sustain an injury.

I have been continuing my work as a junior doctor in paediatrics. Still playing the guess if Dad is the real dad game, it still provides hours of entertainment. I do enjoy paediatrics. I like the children they can’t pretend to be unwell like adults and they complain far less. Sure they do occasionally shit and vomit on me but on the whole they are far superior to adult patients. In april I move on to health care of the elderly, this is a specialty my housemate is currently working in. As much as it amuses me to hear her tales of the demented elderly running riot in the hospital I’m not sure I’m ready for it.

I have been riding my bike most days and i’m starting to try and convert my cyclocross legs into road racing legs. I was chatting to a few friends about how they have found starting work and there seems to be an on going theme! everyone is tired! I thought  i felt tired most of the time because of riding my bike. It would appear working in a stressful environmnet for reasonably long hours takes some getting used to. I noticed this last night. I had had a particularly fraught day at work. A patient had died under tragic circumstances, I was not involved but the mood had changed throughout the department. It was busy and I was feeling overwhelmed with jobs. I finished, ate and went out on my bike. Despite my best intentions to thrash my legs, they just wouldn’t work. I ended up plodding round listening to my ipod and going over and over various issues from my day at work. It dawned on me that when you are mentally and emotionally exhausted it is veryhard to perform physically. This got me thinking about tiredness. I know many patients and friends who have felt tired, too tired to ride, too tired to work. This feeling has taken over. I was recently asked for some advice about feeling overtired. I thought I would put it in a blog and see what others thought about it. So if anyone is feeling a little jaded and worn out it might be worth a read.

Tiredness is like pain it is a very personal symptoms and not something easily described to other people. It can often feel very frustrating trying to explain how you feel. It can also be extremely difficult explaining that kind of fatigue to someone who doesnt exercise or understand the feelings that exercise gives to you. The symptoms people describe are commonly felt when pateints have perhaps had a viral illness or a particularly stressful time that has then hightened their awareness of pain, illness and fatigue. Sometime even a low mood can do this. Often in these situations something happens which means you become more aware of how tired you feel, such as a viral illness that really knocks you off your feet. This causes you to worry about your levels of fatigue which in turn again increases your awareness – it becomes a vicious cycle. Before you know it you are worried about doing activities which might make you tired and because you think you might feel tired then you are tired.  Often themore you rest the worse you feel. It is sometimes recommended to gradually increase the level of activity after a period of recuperation.  It is important to try to differentiate between tiredness that you can push through and ignore and fatigue that requires rest.

 Anyway as I’m a junior doctor I am not allowed to feel tired! if you even mention the  word tired in the hospital some crusty old consultant starts harping on “we used to work 72hour shifts! a 72 hour week would have been a luxury!” Sometimes I feel like turning round and saying “shut it old man! the reason they changed it is because you killed loads of patients, you don’t know your children’s names and you’ve been divorced 3 times!” Naturally I laugh and smile and acknowledge how luck I am!! HAHA the sarcasm!

I would also like you all to know that I have been a doctor for over 7 months and I haven’t even smelt the faintest whiff of a sordid affair! non of my colleagues have run off with their consultants and I haven’t cause anyone shagging a nurse in a store cupboard. Honestly my job is absolutely nothing like ER, and I’m pretty sure I only became a doctor for all the hours of ER I watched as a child. This is  a bitter disappointment. It is also nothing like house! I had a patient recently and I was so excited that I thought I had managed to diagnose something weird and wonderful. The first test I did hinted at the diagnosis so I sent the send test that should confirm it. Each day I checked for the results before impatience got the better of me! I phoned the lab – the result will take 30days! I will be on a different job by then, no high drama house moment for me All in all this doctor business has not delivered, however I have no other career prospects so I’ll continue checking in the store cupboards and eyeing up the consultants.

PS if you haven’t seen it yet check out the rapha website! – I’m famous

Ramblings!! BEWARE! BC ARE EVERYWHERE! (ps please don’t sue me)

Some of you reading this may or may not know about my run in with British Cycling. BC are very frequently criticised like most things these days I suppose, we do live in a very critical society and I love to criticise.  So I was lying in bed last night dreaming of Liam Killeen’s chassis and reading my twitter feed when I noticed that BC have decided to restrict some races from 4th cat riders.  I am a 4th Cat road rider.  I’m a 4th Cat for a number of reasons: I started road racing last summer, fairly casually. I presumed it would be more important to get some good experience on the road than chasing points to work up the cat system. It seemed unimportant last season when I could enter the races that I wanted. I live in the East Midlands there is virtually no women’s road racing here. This was a little tricky. Unsure of how to get into road racing (having very easily ridden a full season of cross- racing locally every weekend) I considered my options.

1. Go to london and ride some of the crits down there – quite a lot of faff considering there was a risk I could be dropped within the first 5 mins.

2. Enter a more local but much more hard core open road race for women involving E1234 rides.

3. Enter a local 4th Cat mens race.

I chose 3. Sheffrec put on a mens race on an open road triangle circuit just up the road from my parents. It’s an evening race. I emailed them to see if they would mind me having a go and they were more than happy.  I turned up I rode my heart out, I was dropped I spent a lot of time out on my own and I worked with a dropped group of male riders. I lasted the full 2 hours and finished. I even won a combativity prize for trying so hard. It was a great experience everyone was really encouraging. So I rode a few more mens races and a couple of crits in london. Not enough women’s only races to get me my cat 3. Did this concern me? No. I had worked hard enough to be able to ride with Mule Bar Girls. I was confident in handling my bike, I can sprint out of corners with the men. Road racing – easier than my cross season

So I was a little upset when I realised my season was going to be limited. Living in the east midlands is a disadvantage we only have 2 women’s only road races between feb and june. So I had a little rant on twitter about the things that piss me off about BC. Firstly I have to pay the same licence fee as the men despite there not being anywhere near the same amount of opportunities to race and secondly this announcement that they were limiting these races but no explanation of what us lowly new to road racing bike riders would get in return. I work as a doctor, I’m fairly used to giving bad news and I know that it is always helpful to follow it with some sort of positive. And thirdly they seem intent on promoting women only rides and sportives but the racing seems to get pushed to one side. So I rant on twitter and head off to sleep.

UP at 6am and off to the hospital to cure the poorly children. I’m just about to start the ward round when my phone rings. VOICEMAIL – “This is Jenny from BC calling to discuss your comments on twitter and let you know what BC are doing to improve women’s racing!” Off to the naughty step I go. Bloody hell Ive complained about BC loads they’ve never called me before.  I was a little anxious BC did not seem very happy but I was kind of impressed they had bothered to call. I’m a customer of BC I pay the membership and race licence fee, they must be calling to listen to my feedback and see how they can help improve my BC experience. Unfortunately that was not really the response I got. I spoke to Jenny Gretton who does seem to be working hard to improve women’s road racing and has been involved in establishing the team series events but clearly did not appreciate my comments. I was met with a defensive bombardment of information about all the things they were doing to help women’s cycling. I will summarise the conversation as it went on for some time.

4th cats cannot ride the national series races for 2 reasons. 1 safety – these races are not for inexperienced riders and last season there were loads of crashes. There were 7 4th cats in the Cheshire classic RR – “none of them finished in the top 20″. (I’m not sure what the point of that comment was – I didn’t finish in the top 20 at the CX national champs but I hope they let me ride it next year) I wasn’t at the Cheshire classic RR so I don’t know how those 7 4th cat riders feel about this and I wouldn’t like to speculate. The other reason for not allowing 4th cats is that it then raises the profile of these races and gives women something to aim for! (make of that what you will) and will make the women’s cat system more valid.

In return for having your already limited race calendar reduced BC will be putting on more road racing opportunities for the inexperienced rider, but these haven’t been confirmed on the calendar yet and more information about this will be put out in a press release some time soon. None of these extra opportunities are in my area they will still involve going to london or the north-west.

I did question why it was so difficult to put on women’s racing and intro to racing sessions, the answer to this was that BC relies on volunteers to put these things on and so if the volunteers aren’t willing to do it, these events won’t happen. Which I feel is precisely why we should be so impressed by the London women’s cycle league who do a huge amount for women’s cycling down in london. I did ask if there was any incentive or could there be any incentive to encourage clubs to hold road racing skills sessions or women’s road racing (no real solution for this).

I do feel it is a bit of shame that BC have yet again struggled to portray women’s racing in a positive light, by announcing this restriction with no positive spin on it whatsoever and making out 4th cat riders cause loads of crashes. Look at the tour de france those lot crash all over the place. I hope they can turn this arround and I look forward to reading the press release and attending some of these new opportunities.

I do feel very strongly about the women’s road racing as I think it is such a shame that it doesn’t live up to the CX and mtb side of things. During the CX season I can race locally every weekend sometimes twice a weekend. I can turn up and ride a national trophy and I can line up against some of the best CX riders in the world at our national champs.  You only have to look at this years start sheet to see how fast women’s cycling is growing. I think we must have had approximately double the entrants. At our local NDCXL races we have had up to 22 women racing. what do these women do in the summer – would any of them fancy road racing? If you can bust your gut for an hour on a cross bike and handle the slippery conditions, road racing is not that daunting.

Improving safety in road racing is clearly very important and it is also clear that it is not just a problem in women’s cycling. It will be interesting to see if cutting 7 4th cat riders from a race means no crashes. I hope there are no crashes – doctors do not need the extra work. I feel a better way to do it would be to improve rider education. If you are a 4th cat why not send them a road racing handbook detailing the skills you might need should you want to enter a road race.  For example, cornering and descending at speed, group riding, holding a wheel, cornering in a bunch. You could even suggest ways to get these skills – join your local bike club, ride the group rides, ride the chaingang, come to one of our road racing skills session, etc etc. Perhaps you could even offer an incentive to cycling clubs who encourage and bring on female road racers. There will always be someone who panics slams the breaks on and takes a few people out every now and again.

I do however appreciate that sitting at my laptop and suggesting these things is easier said than done and I’m sure things are greatly improved. I have been told by BC should anyone ask me about the 4th cat restrictions to tell you all that there will be other racing opportunities that will be announced at some point!

I would also suggest that if you enjoy a quiet life, do not complain openly on twitter as you will receive a number of phone calls and text messages informing you quite why your opinions are wrong.

I would love nothing more than to see some evening circuit races and road racing skills sessions for ladies just like they have in london and the north west all over the UK. I would love to be able to see more and more women able to road race, so many women that we could have separate 3rd and 4th cat races. And that way being introduced to cycling, riding a few sportives, having a go at your first road race, becoming a regular on the circuit – is a natural progression.

 

Next week more rants about life in the hospital!!

 

IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN RELEASED! – random rants from a sleep deprived doctor attempting a national trophy CX race

This is the blog I thought I shouldn’t really publish, but I wrote it, it seems a shame to go to waste. I’ve censored it a little. It’s from the past so it may seem a bit random. 

POSTED IN RETROSPECT some time in November.

This weekend I thought I would have a go at my first national trophy cx race! It’s quite a big deal to a chopper like me so I decided I had best get some decent training and race prep in. I managed to train fairly well even the odd double day. However the race prep all went tits up when I realised on that very same weekend I would be working the twilight shift (4pm-midnight) in the surgical assesment unit all weekend. After a long week of standing in the operating theatre occassionally sewing someones breast back together and dreaming about being in exotic hot places with smooth tarmac roads, friday arrived. Starting work at 4pm meant I could have a leisurely morning and a frantic turbo session before heading to work. There is nothing worse than driving into the hospital car park seeing everyone else heading home for their weekend. I strolled into the unit ready to just crack on, I arrived to complete chaos. The boys on during the day had obviously decided to do absolutely no work, there were irrate nurses, fuming patients and millions of jobs to be done. Resisting the urge to have a complete melt down before the weekend had even begun, I started my nazi style dictatorship to try and regain some law and order. The day team swap to the night team at 8pm and the night registra who is in charge arrived. I made her a cup of tea and tried to prepare her for the pile of shit that we had to shovel. I was met with “this is not happening tomorrow night! I dont take any shit, I’m having those boys’ balls on a plate!” this is what it takes to be a female surgical trainee! I merrily carried on amusing myself with the painful castration that would take place the next morning.

Saturday was pre race day, a bit of a cross ride then off to work. Less chaos! the castration had worked.

Race day arrived I was shattered bed at 1.30am not much to eat, disturbed sleep and then I was on the course warming up. I was pretty bloody nervous. Absolutely convinced I shouldnt be there and that all the spectators were laughing at me. I quite enjoyed the race in the end, except for my appallingly tired legs and a crazy wind. I finished I wasnt last, I was vaguely satisfied and shit before I knew it  I needed to go back to work. By now all my enthusiasm had run out, I hated the hospital, I hated the patients and I hated myself for picking such a ridiculous career. Dressed in a pair of extremely large blue scrubs and my compression tights and armed with a packet of cookies, I started seeing the patients. God I was hungry and thirsty, You know when you are thirsty when you catheterise a patient and the urine flows in to the a bag and all you can think of is a nice thirst quenching glass of orange squash! It was busy and the patients were poorly.One poor chap, a recovering alcoholic was shaking with withdrawal and rolling around on he bed in agony. I’m usually quite cold hearted to those that self inflict ill health and disease, but this chap was in a sorry state and not a dissimilar age to me. I was asking him about his drinking and what had brought on the binge that had ultimately ended with his hospital admission. He announced “the worst thing in the world happened to me!” I was thinking perhaps a berevement or some such awful tragedy! Nope his girlfriend went on holiday with another man. “O for goodness sake!” again trying to be kind and patient I filled him full of drugs.

The highlight of these shifts in the hospitals have to be meeting some of the very worst people you could ever imagine. One a female prisoner, chained to two prison wardens . She was quite possibly the rudest most foul person I have ever met. After being constantly abused, insulted and spat at – for trying to make her better and prevent her from dying from sepsis. I gave up! she wanted to leave. I told her I was more than happy for her to go back to the prison she wasnt being forced to be here. I left her to get a drink and contemplate cutting her arm off and shoving it down her throat so she could never speak to anyone ever again. Trying to remind myself Im here to HEAL the patients and not cause them excrucitating discomfort like that woman deserved, I was disturbed by another patient shouting. Some woman was going mental in the waiting area. THis happens all the time. People seem to forget that if you are shouting and screaming you probably arent that poorly and we are quite busy treating the semi comatose patient who is peri death. This patient wouldnt let up they was going to report us to everyone they could think of. The nurses were getting increasingly upset. FUCK! all i wanted to do now was make this patient wait as long as possible but as she was starting to disrupt the rest of the ward i thought I had better see her. Turns out her gastric band was too tight and she hadnt had anything to eat for a whole week. By the looks of her this had done her no harm what so ever! This was also all our fault. I again wanted to point out that if the “stupid woman hadn’t eaten herself in to such a disgusting state, she wouldnt have needed the band and she wouldnt be in this mess” but obviously I promised to do everything I could to get her band deflated as soon as possible as it must be very distressing for her……

11.45pm only 15mins to go before I can finally go home wash properly and lie in my bed. 11.46pm call from theatre, they need the other doctors to go and perform a appendicetomy on an 11yo. Bollocks! I cant just pop home and leave all the patients waiting to be seen whilst the seniors go and operate. Left on my own with the instructions make sure no one is sick and go home! you are probably thinking PHoebe this is a hopsital everyone is sick! WRONG! everyone thinks they are sick, the majority are mildly unwell and could probably go home if the medical staff werent so afraid of being sued!

Finally my work is done nearing 1am when a little old woman appears. She is beautifully dressed with a lovely hand bag, I reckon shes about 80years old. I was beginning to think I might be hallucinating (post race and no proper food for 8 hours!) and that she was my fairy god mother, come to feed me and tuck me into bed. Turns out she is the wife of a very elderly patient with dementia. His dementia is so bad that his mind and soul appear to have left some years ago and he is now just a husk of a body that once was fully functional human. He was unable to communicate and his wife had waited to tell us what had happened to him. This broke my heart, she was a practical woman she told me she had managed with him at home for a number of years until his confusion had worsened to such an extent that he had started lashing out at her. How on earth was I going to get this lady home at 1am! After working out if I was allowed to take her home on my way back from work, we decided the best thing to do was get her a taxi as I still didnt know when I would be leaving. I packed her off home asking her to call the nurses to let them know she had arrived safely. at 2am I also left knowing full well in 4hours time I needed to be up dressed and ready for a 13hour on call day shift, O how I was ready to find a new job. (I also nearly needed to find a new boyfriend as arriving at his house at 2.30am with the most appalling hunger rage, he has left me nothing to eat! but he had cleaned my bikes.)

Guess who’s back? Back again!

Apologies for not blogging sooner. I wrote a blog in November and saved it to my email. When I came back to read it I realised it was far too angry and scathing to publish ( I may publish some highlights), such was my bitter and twisted life at the time. I have subsequently finished my job in the cut throat and depressing world of general surgery, this does mean I have survived my first job as a junior doctor! I believe I have just about survived it unscathed, I’m sure various friends would not agree. For those of you who have are not familiar with the book House of God, I will explain. The foundation programme - a training scheme for the first 2 years of your junior doctor life, is a factory. It takes youthful and cheerful medical students who pass finals and beats them to a pulp, sleep derives them, feeds them toast, biscuits and quality street and churns out bitter, miserable lonely frumps! For this reason it is imperative to maintain a certain degree of work life balance. BLAHBLAH (basically don’t get fat and or suicidal)

 

I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be all that difficult if I wasn’t also trying to balance cycling and a crazy desire to be less crap at cycling. There have been many evenings during 2011 when I would arrive home, emotionally and physically drained and somehow crawl my way on to the bike, rather than lying on the sofa and eating my weight in ben and jerrys! (a well known pass time of junior doctors). I’m not sure how much my cycling gained from training when this exhausted but it eased that little voice in my mind saying “you need to train!! you will always be rubbish! TRAIN!”

But this is good! Exercise is good, it helps you feel less stressed. It means you can eat lots of cake! YOu tell all  your patients to exercise! – well yes I do and obviously exercise is good and I’m sure a leisurely swim or a nice yoga session is good for mind, body and soul. However thrashing yourself on your bike night after night leaves you grumpy because A. you are constantly starving and no amount of white toast and nutella will curb your hunger and B. running for cardiac arrests, kneeling down to take blood and stairs all make you feel like you want to cut off your legs and sit in a wheel chair. But such is my desire to be marginally less shite at cycling – I do it and then I spend large amounts of time complaining about how hard my life is and how no one understands! HAHAHA.

So I have finished one job and moved to my next job, which is paediatrics – a rather stupid friend of a friend asked me if that was care of paedophiles! I would just like to clarify that no it fucking isn’t! It is the care of all creatures under the age of 18yrs. As you can imagine (well those of you that do not have children) this is a shit scary job. Poorly adults don’t really bother me a great deal anymore, I know roughly what to do, who to call and how to do it. Poorly babies on the otherhand scare the living day lights out of me. My first really sick baby was struggling to breath and looking a little blue around the mouth. My stomach seemed to drop right through my shoes. Nothing I seemed to have learnt in the past 4 months seemed appropriate for a person smaller than a handbag. Thankfully everyone else in the department isn’t a total idiot and they stepped in and it turn out the patient only had the baby version of man flu and was well in a few days. Paediatrics is a very different department to work in and being as junior as I am, I am trusted to do very little – which I enjoy immensely. I have therefore invented a few games to keep myself amused. One is viewing the mother of the child and trying to work out if I have seen her before on Jeremy Kyle (highly likely) and then trying to work out how on earth she managed to find someone to reproduce with. It is an absolute mystery, I “shudder!” to work out how they even manage the logistics of it. The other game that amuses me is when I meet the so called “father” of the child, I spend a great deal of time working out how much I would bet on that man being the actual father! Often the man isn’t even the same shade as the  child.

This concerns me even more because it means the mother has actually found more than 1 person to reproduce with, such is life in our ever morose general public. But I like seeing the children and they aren’t half as annoying as my previous adult patients  and are often quite amusing.

So in between running around and saving babies lives (screaming for help and then crying in a cupboard), I have been racing my bike. I have good days and bad days I struggle sometimes on the weekend after long shifts. But I enjoy the racing.

I have entered the national champs, not because I perceive myself as good enough to ride but cock of the moment is going down to race and I’m not going to just stand there and pit so I’ll have to have a little go and try not to embarrass myself. I have struggled reflecting on my cx season so far as it hasn’t been what I would have wanted, but it is only my second season. I have to accept that choosing the career I have chosen and working 70-80hour weeks sometimes does not always bode well for great athletic performances.
However there is no way I’m giving up thrashing myself on the bike – because that would mean giving in and becoming a boring medicine obsessed frump and there is no way people like that make it into the cyclepassion calender.

Have you ever drunk baileys from a shoe?

Sufferfest- hell hath no fury! The review

This morning I was a little short on time and therefore couldn’t manage my usual long Sunday ride. I decided instead to opt for a short intense turbo session. But I get so bored on the turbo, I can manage an hour tops and most of that is spent sitting on the bike whinging about how much I hate the turbo. What better distraction than the Sufferfest films. I used these last winter and have become a big fan. The good chaps at Sufferfest sent me their latest film, dedicated to female cycling. I’m a female and I love cycling, it sounded ideal.

With the turbo set up, fan on, drink at the ready, I pressed play. Im not sure I had quite mentally prepared myself for how hard this session was going to be. As usual the introduction set the scene and geared me up for some hardcore racing. The race face was on, I was going to ride these pro ladies into the ground. The warm up is fairly short so you might want to prepare your legs as it goes fairly hard from the off. I was soon in there with the pros spotting my favourites. Once the first 20mins interval started the race face soon dissolved into the big ugly pain face, how was I going to keep this going for 20mins? A further few mins in and chris stuck his head round the door “how you getting on?” cluthing the bars, sweat dripping off my chin, ” terrible they just keep attacking, why are they attacking?” the changes in pace are fast and furious and there is no let up, before i knew it a mad sprint for the line. I was so engrossed i was going win, hands in the air! The rest interval seemed far to short and again I was doubting my ability to do it again. The second 20mins had some great chaingang style efforts, more short climbs and more bloody attacking. Voss was dishing out some serious pain! Just when I thought I could do more we lead into the sprint. A short rest interval and with some extremely sore legs, I join team HTC TTT this is an absolute leg breaker. Chewing the stem, praying for the end, it was finally over. I try not to fall off the turbo with relief.

To finish off there is a reflective cool down, which I at first scoffed at believing it to be rather cheesy. However when I concentrated on the soothing voice I realised how useful it would be to reflect on my training not just my racing.

The footage for this film is absolutely superb and I much preferred it to some of the others. It focuses on one race so you can really loose yourself in the effort and the racing, which allowed me to forget about how long and painful 20mins would be. The changes in pace are unpredictable and leg breaking but absolutely fantastic training. I would thoroughly recommend this especially when the weather is grim or the snow comes, it is the ideal way to get the most out of using the turbo and prevents mind numbing boredom. Well done Sufferfest!!!

INFECTIOUS RAGE!

So on friday I was punished for all my sins by somehow being tricked into helping another team with their post take admissions. This involves 50 or so patients, angry nurses, general chaos and misery. Thankfully my delightful housemate volunteered to help me and between the two of us we smashed it! There was however a slight glitch in our plans of uber organisation and world domination.
I was flapping about on the ward round, juggling a million pieces of paper and frantically answering the constant bleeping from my pager. “Hello did someone bleep Phoebe the F1″ “O hello there is Miss M!” (O HOLY FUUUUCCKKK! miss M in one of my consultants and she is the scariest woman in the whole hospital, infamous for reducing medical students and junior doctors to a blubbering tear strewn mess). “err Hi Miss M what can I do for you?”
The long and short of it, is that Miss M couldn’t care less that I have 50 patients to try to sort out, she has one breast patient that I need to attend to IMMEDIATELY! because she believes she may have a terrifying flesh eating bacterial infection which best case scenario will leave her disfigured, worse case scenario – dead! I dash off feeling sick to my stomach, the shit has hit the fan, if I don’t sort this out Miss M will probably have me hung drawn and quartered in the hospital forecourt…..O Yeh and the patient might die!!!! Thankfully I managed to rope in some help, various phone calls later and a few hours pass the patient in question must be rushed to theatre. 7pm arrived my housemate and I have finally got through all the jobs its only taken us 11hours of solid work. We reward ourselves with a cheeky drink in the pub and head home. I lie awake that night in bed worrying about the patient hoping that Miss M is happy with everything I’ve done. I followed the hospital guidelines to the letter and it was now in the hands of the surgeons, god I hoped she would survive, she was only young and her daughter was the same age as me.

Saturday I’m up early off to Sherwood forest for some cyclocross action. Still worried about the patient so dropped a text to the on call reg. I tentatively awaited a reply…….has she survived????

Apparently she’s sitting up in ITU asking when she can go out for a fag!!!!!!!! o for gods sake, I wish I had never even bothered worrying. bloody smokers. she probably had half the skin and her breast removed from her chest but she must have a fag, regardless of it meaning she will probably never heal!

That left me free to enjoy the day. Turning up at trails centre in full lycra with a cross bike is obviously frowned upon. I think I might have been one of the first ever females to turn up. People just kept staring at me, when I say people I, of course, mean men in baggy shorts, lots of body armour pedaling around the flat paths in the lowest gear possible! These strange creatures would not stop staring and whispering. It sort of fueled me to ride my arse off in the woods, we hit the red trail and I spent my time frantically trying to catch the mtbers and over take them. I even ran past some of them carrying my bike, which was followed by a lot of swearing (fromt them, not from me for once). I have decided these are a totally different breed of cyclist and quite an unfriendly breed. I did really enjoy my day though and I’m now so keen for more mtbing but I am not doing the baggy shorts thing.

After a weekend of trying to pretend patients and hospitals DO NOT EXIST, I’m back to work on nights. These are a terrifying experience, I am responsible for half of the hospital. I carry a mobile phone and a coordinator calls through the jobs for me. She is meant to screen the jobs to make sure they are the sort of emergency tasks required of a sleep deprived, rage filled doctor in the middle of the night.
I cannot explain the all-encompassing rage that fills me during these shifts. For instance a call comes through, can you see a patient on ward blah blah with high blood sugar levels. I trot down its bound to be a really poorly patient, they wouldn’t call me otherwise (ahahhha how wrong I could me). I arrive, the nurse explains, she’s got high blood sugar levels and she wants to have a sandwich. Firstly its 2am, secondly the patient in question weighs 170kg, thirdly she should be asleep. She definitely does not need a sandwich. I manage to half contain my green wing style fatist rage and tell the nurse not to give her a sandwich.

An hour later another call, “she’s eaten the sandwich and her sugars are still high!”
“WHAT! I TOLD YOU SHE COULDNT HAVE A FUCKING SANDWICH!! I EXPLAINEED ABOUT HER DIABETES AND HOW SHE WILL GO BLIND AND HER FEET WILL FALL OFF AND HER KIDNEYS WILL DIE!” I want to shout. I think I managed something more polite and less sweary. I give up and learnt my lesson, don’t bother talking to/advising the patients.

More mundane and meaningless tasks come through, every time I sit down or make a cup of tea another rubbish job is called through. My feet are starting to hurt and I’m desperately trying to push thoughts of fluffy pillows and beds out of my mind. I eventually make a cup of tea and nod off in a chair before drinking it. Approx 2 mins later I am rudely awakened by “CARDIAC ARREST WARD 304 CARDIAC ARREST WARD 304″ being screamed out of the little black box of doom attached to my belt. Shit I havent even had chance to drink my tea and someone has decided to die. I set off in a half power walk half jog trying desperately to swill the sleepy haze from my head. I’m sweating and my heart is pounding. I arrive to a bright yellow, swollen patient, bleeding from various orifices. It’s a terrifying site. The nurses and a couple of other doctors are doing CPR and the defib is attached. I take over holding the oxygen mask to give the nurse a rest and to make it look like I have some sort of purpose, (thank god the more senior doctors got their first). The patient is dying from liver disease from alcohol. He is young and he is beyond the point of no return. The senior doctors call it after about 1hour of us trying various different things. It’s a sorry state of affairs. I head back to my cup of tea it’s stone cold. I make another its 6am I’m just about to take a sip when the phone goes again ARGGHHHHH the rage takes over. Slamming the cup down I set off to see some chap with a rash, the nurse is concerned he might be having an anaphylactic reaction as he’s on antibiotics.

I arrive on the ward, the nurses are in hand over. I can’t remember the patient’s name because I was too busy cursing the hospital and all the patients in it whilst the nurse was relaying me the message. I hunt around for a patient in acute respiratory distress, everyone seems vaguely asleep. Finally a nurse turns up and I explain who I am. Turns out the patient isn’t even here, he has gone off the ward for a cigarette. “so he definitely isn’t dying? ” “er no I think he is just a bit itchy from all the morphine he’s had” again suppressing my desire to act like a total arsehole and kick up a fuss, I pinch a quality street from the decimated tin (probably only opened 20mins earlier) “OK call me if he looks like he’s dying when he comes back”

Finally it’s time to go home every single problem I’ve seen this evening has been a result of people neglecting their health and over indulging -alcohol, food, smoking. It’s a bloody nightmare. I set off driving, I’ve been awake for roughly 20hours. I drive out of the car park we use when on nights, round the roundabout and straight into the car park we use during the day. What the fuck am I doing? I’m more of a menace on the road than in the hospital. I’m finally home to try to sleep, only 3 more night shifts to go. I hope the rage doesn’t crack me.

HEAVY BREATHING!

I have finally got a few minutes to myself to reflect on last week! but first I have struggled through a usual monday morning in the hospital. Man did I feel rough this morning, after some confusion with the time and an argument in the post office I arrived at work. We saw all the patients only to then have to go round and see them all again because our reg decided to turn up at the last moment. We have various ladies all in various states of health ranging from one enormous swollen breast to another with leeches! right now i’m assuming we only turned the clocks back by one hours and not a couple of centuries. Since when have we used to leeches in the hospital? I’ve seen maggots used but not leeches. I have made it my mission to day to skulk around looking for the leeches to see if I can see them action as I am quite astounded!

Each day in the hospital there is a little stand outside the restaurant (restaurant that’s a hilarious name for a place that serve such utter inedible shite!) where people stand and hand out information. Today as it’s halloween they have some sort of “Paegans in the hospital” info, I picked up a leaflet. I assumed that the leaflet would explain to me how to recognise the paegans and which department to send them to for burning at the stake! Apparently not. I’m also pretty sure paegans don’t need to come to hospital as they can cure themselves with herbs, spells and sacrifice, etc. I know what paegans look like I’ve seen them on come dine with me!

Having seen the patients on the ward round and avoided being converted to paeganism we have taken up our usual position of drinking tea and complaining.

Last weekend I travelled down to london to race muddy hell. I was extremely apprehensive as I was meeting some of the other mule bar

concentration face

girls and I was concerned they might have changed their mind about me joining the team. They were however extremely friendly. I had an awesome time being scared shitless on the course, riding like a retard and breaking various bits of bicycle. Despite many bike changes I managed to hold on to a respectable 8th. Thankfully Lou won so no one noticed my poor Mule bar performance. I also managed to nail my dismounts/remounts at speed and felt quite pro riding through the beer tent in front of the crowds! I was immediately let down by my ability on the rest of the course. Thankfully I redeemed myself by putting some snazzy ana nichoola kit on and acting as a podium girl and trying to snog Mr blobby and Nick craig!

My post race relief was immediately replaced by overwhelming anxieties about traveling to spain the next day. Thankfully I met up with james from Rapha at the airport and we found the lovely Sarah outside starbucks and enjoyed a very smoot transition to a very wet hill in southern spain. Sarah and I had had very little sleep from chatting most of the night and jumping up and down trying on all the shiny rapha kit james had given u

christmas come early

s. Our first task after meeting the team was to build our bikes whilst being filmed. Jesus christ this was harder than any medical exam I have done. They filmed us in expensive rapha tops, I was trying desperately not to get oil all over the clothes or my face whilst not looking like a totalretard, I’m pretty sure I failed and when anyone sees the film they will laugh themselves stupid at my ineptitude.

I had hardly said 2 words since arriving, it was my birthday and I was feeling rather embarrassed at my lack of cycling skill. The roads lookedincredibly steep and long and I most definitely did not have the right gears. For 3 days we enjoyed brand new cycling outfits delivered to our rooms each morning, the kit was amazing,I’ve never been so comfortable on a bike. We were then filmed getting dressed (makes a change from the usual videos I make getting undressed ONLY JOKING! I DONT DO THAT!)  and then filmed all day out on the bikes, suffering like a dog. We rode until it got dark, got back in the van, ate lots of food drank some wine and crashed out in bed. My legs became more sore, I spent alot of time riding on my own. Thankfully for what I lacked in cycling ability I hope I managed to make up for in general cheeriness! This was aided by the fact that I was so far back no one could hear me complaining. I did seem to become more popular after regailing a few tales of hilarious patient encounters – “its ok that you’re shit at cycling because you spend most of your time fishing things out of people’s arses!” They also put a camera downmy bra to record my heavy breathing…. the more I tell of this trip the more I realise that readers will assume I’ve skipped the soft core cycle passion bike porn and gone heavy duty!

I had a fantastic time the weather was great, the guys were great and the riding nearly killed me. I had a bit of a mission to get home which involves some running, now I’m not sure if you have ever seen a woman with broken legs running through an airport but there was a great deal of whimpering and hobbling, I made it and my bike made it! WINNER!

I thought its ok, I can come back to work and return to my place on the sofa and relax. This was not to be the case! I was on call on the friday for 13 hours. after 3 hours sleep I tried very hard to put on my professional nice to patients, non swearing face. I was covering urology – this involves bladders, cock, balls and kidneys oo and the prostate! A lovely GP called in explaining to me that he thought his patient was in urinary retention, the story sounded a little dubious but the GP was nice and I don’t really know what I am doing so I said send him in. The chap arrived suffering from terrible constipation and I could feel something hard when I pressed his tummy, The GP thought this was his bladder – it wasnt, it wasnt the right shape or in the right place. My guess was that it was POO seeing as the chap was constipated. Various investigations later proved I was right and the GP was WRONG! I did a little dance in my head and proceeded to arrive home to chris (who is a GP) “AHAHAHAH chris GPs KNOW NOTHING. he thought it was his bladder but it wasnt it was pooo ahahhahaha!” I was all very smug (and foolish!)

My delightful friends had built a tower of profiterols for my birthday! with some extensive decorations. the tower fulfilled my need to comfort eat my way out of the utter despair that I currently feel about being a junior doctor having tasted the life of a slow but pro cyclist.

“Will you get to shag Paul Smith?”

It is a well known fact then when one area of your life starts to go well, other areas fall apart. This past week I had an exciting proposition……no before you ask I am not making “cock of the moment” ” cock of a lifetime” something far more exciting happened!!……………I was asked by rapha if I would like to join them on their spring/summer collection photo shoot in southern spain. For 24h I was pretty sure this was some sort of cruel joke, but it became apparent they actually meant ME! Again I’m still not entirely sure they know who I am and they may be rather disappointed when a shabby and tired looking junior doctor from UP NORF turns up. I mean I only own a rapha cap and I’ve never even ridden a fixie, I’m so not cool enough for this. And what is worse it’s not even your usual “potter up and down in front of the camera” photo shoot, it’s a ride all day with 3 pro men until you’re at death’s door then we will photograph the sweat dripping off your chin – photoshoot. However I have concluded that they used Julie Krasniak for their last photo shoot and she’s done the cycle passion Calender shoot so I have decided that shipping myself and my bike across europe means I’m one step closer to soft core bicycle porn.

I have also worked out the reason why they asked me. As I mentioned they used Julie last time, well all the pro CX ladies are now racing in america or belgium and all the pro road ladies are on their holidays after a long season, and the trackies are inside somewhere riding in circles, so essentially I’m the last woman left. So on sunday at 6.20am I will be making my way by train plane and automobile to the depths of spain to compete against Dan Craven in sprinting for road signs.

So with all this excitement and good fortune, various other things had to go wrong. I have decided I am somewhat a soft touch, I always try and help people out and I have difficulty saying no (no boys this doesn’t mean I’m easy!). Admittedly I can be a right twat (usually when hungry) but close friends are close friends and I would like to think I would do just about anything for a friend, I mean that’s what friends are for. Everybody needs somebody when the going gets tough, unfortunately my opinions are not universally shared. I don’t want to dwell on these things but when people close to you are being hurtful and deceitful you really do find out who the good guys are. And that is precisely why some of my friends rallied round and I had a wonderful day on sunday catching up with my old housemate Jenni and my good mates lawrence and josh. We drank beer in the sunshine and cheered chris on at the rapha supercross! A great event! made event better by annie simpson taking the women’s win on her old CX bike.

I raced on saturday in the NDCXL, the race was at alfreton, a venue I had a really good race at last year. As chris was away at the rapha race in Windermere I had to go it alone. I arrived far far far too early and had already faffed about and done 2 practise laps before my friends had arrived. The course really suited me lots of up and down and different sections, I had a good practise lap with Jamie Harris (Nikki Harris’ brother) who really boosted my confidence. I rode the best I have ever ridden technically. I stayed well in control and pushed hard out of every corner and up every climb. I stuck to my line and I didn’t let any of the other 200!!! riders bully me. I did rip my legs to shreds doing an aggressive overtaking manoeuvre to get past a load of men who were queuing up to get over a log during the chaotic first lap. It was a great race and the weather was lovely, I came 6th out of 22women (what an amazing turn out!). I’m still well down in the men 130/200 but having been to some other cx races recently I have to stay the strength and depth of the standard in NDCXL is a different level, so I am trying not to be too disheartened.

There has been some cheating in our races though which is starting to get a little irritating. We have a box gridding system. Box one – top 1-25 riders, box 2 – 25-50, box 3 everybody else with a league position and box 4 rear markers those without league placings. Now obviously when top riders come to race they go in box 1. Us ladies usually start at the front of box 3, there are no ladies in the top50 at NDCXL so i’m not sure why so many insist on sneaking into the box ahead of us. The commisaires are becoming increasingly frustrated trying to fish people out of the various boxes whilst we stand around getting cold. Hopefully someone will dish out a suitable punishment for them.

 

Right that’s enough of me ranting I’m off to the chaingang tonight to receive some pain dished out by some men on posh bikes. Although after last week’s ride ended in a nasty crash they have to be nice to me so I can put my doctoring skills to good use when they need them.

 

Just another quick note – I have just been accused of trying to sexually assault a rancid female patient. She wasn’t exactly a charming or well groomed member of society and she had had an operation on her groin. I needed to check the wound before she went home. Apparently me asking to do so meant I was some sort of perve. Stupid woman – she didn’t have to have to operation done she could have just festered at home with her grotty abcess. I’m not entirely sure why the jeremy kyle class of patients always assume everyone fancies them! Perhaps she’s just watched so much TV that she’s been brainwashed into believing all doctors are sex crazed maniacs shagging in all the store cupboards throughout the hospital. If only that were true my job would be far more exciting.

CHEESE! BLOODY CHEESE?!

I’m currently sitting at work and have no patients to look after! YEY! This gives me time to reflect upon my weekend and my racing. So far I have done 4 cross races 2 disasterous ones and 2 ok ones.

Last weekend I raced our local league in glorious sunshine! It was hotter than hell. I’m not complaining but I was sweating just getting the bikes off the roof. (haha just re read this – like I get the bikes off the roof, that’s what men are for). We were allowed to carry drinks but we couldn’t get a drink from the pits without putting a foot down! bloody stupid rule. I had a cracking start and rode confidently. I was fading in the heat but so were many other riders, I could see people pulling up and just sitting by the side of the course. I knew if just kept going I would be in for a good result. I carried a bottle in my jersey and managed a few sips of drink. I felt reloaded and ready to go for the final 2 laps. That was when disaster struck, with my over enthusiasm I hit a tree root pretty heavy handed and it must have bounced the chain up which got caught in the wheel and wrapped the rear mech up. My wheel was locked and I was convinced the rear mech was buggered. I set off running. Only to realise as I exited the woods I had the whole course to run to get back to the pits. The bell was ringing for the final lap. It was game over. Sick to my stomach with disappointment I made my way to the pits. I had to console myself with sunbathing and a Mr Whippy.

With this cross racing business I’m still stuck in limbo. I’m not quite up there with the fast group of ladies but there is a big gap between me and the ladies I was racing with last season. Now I’m very pleased with this but as I’m never ever satisfied I want to be up there at the front. I want to win something! So got to keep up the effort with the training. I was feeling a little down about my cycling and sore and tired legs, chris decided I needed a confidence boost. For the past year I’ve been saying I will try our local chaingang but I keep putting off. I’m always worried I will be dropped after the first 5 minutes. Well this week I manned up and gave it a go and had an awesome time and bruised a few male egos!

I’ve still been busy doctoring all week and I am managing to avoid the copious amounts of chocolates and biscuits that appear on the wards from all the lovely patients! The hospital is the ideal place to become the size of a house. To prevent this I have been cycling to work. I have essentially managed to get up early enough to do this once a week. Last Wednesday I decided it would be a good idea. It was blowing a gale. I was facing 20miles of flat head wind. What should I do? Get in the car? no I’m not that weak. I dragged Chris out of bed, stuck him on his bike and sat on his wheel and dam that was hard enough with a bloody rucksack on. I made it to work just in time to have a meeting with my supervisor (looking rather windswept and sweaty – he’s a triathlete so he understands). All that effort in the morning was most definitely going to be worth flying home with a massive tail wind. That was until at 5.15pm I managed to snap the key in the bike lock. Bike stuck locked up and me looking very silly in lycra! What did I do…. call chris!

Fridays in the hospital are the worst day of the week (unless you are working the weekend). I was helping another team out, which is a pretty rubbish job because you don’t know any of the patients or how their consultant like things doing. Friday’s job was looking after the fatties. Now some would say I’m a little fattiest. I’m not I love all shapes and sizes (not to sleep with of course). You can be fit and fat, that’s not the issue. But these patients have BMIs of greater than 45- 50. most of them weight 3 x what I do, and most of the time they are charming lovely people. However trust me to get a witch of a fatty. I tried most of the day to persuade her to get out of bed and walk around. She had had a gastric bypass done, a last ditch attempt to stop her rolling into a very early grave. I was dealing with another bariatric patient (a nice one) behind a curtain, whilst listening into a consultation between the bariatric dietician (also fat!) and the evil patient. I heard the patient say “so when exactly can I start eating cheese again” It took all my self control not to run out from behind the curtain shouting “CHEESE! BLOODY CHEESE! look what cheese has done to you! you’ve eaten enough cheese to last you the rest of your life NO MORE BLOODY CHEESE!” Thankfully I managed not to reinact a scene from greenwing and remain professional!

Back to cycling, this weekend I raced at shipley park, this is a horrible race and one most of us dread. There is rather a large hill in the middle of the course which we seem to get sent up and down and round many times. The course this year was a little kinder and I enjoyed it. I absolutely nailed my dismounts and remounts for the first time in a race I even felt a little pro. I kept my effort nice and even and although I didn’t make it up to the fast girls I did well. I did have the worst start ever. No one warned me the whistle was going to go, I don’t think the comissaire who I crashed into knew we were going to star, the chap next to me still had one arm warmer on! I do need to be a little more confident in the wet and trust my lovely new specialized tubs. All these things seem to take time and experience – I think I need to learn to be patient.I did manage to produce a series of Greipel style faces though.

On sundays I normally enjoy (that’s the wrong bloody word) I mean suffer – a long ride in the peaks with various men. The men do a lot of chatting and I pedal furiously behind trying not to get dropped.

This sunday we pedalled out to watch “cock of the moment” ride the infamous monsal head hill climb. This involved me and 3 sweaty men and my parents huddling together on a hill side with a box  Krispie Kreme donuts and some rather insipid coffee. Thankfully chris came 2nd and won £100 (which I had already spent on a 2nd hand jet wash).

As it had started to pour with rain the boys all jumped in chris’ car rather than ride home. Leaving no room for me. I  had to man up and pedal back whilst being water boarded on my friend james’ wheel. Still it’s all good training for the misery that is winter cross racing.

This week I’m back on it for next weekend. Chaingang. hill reps, turbo, skills plus a full week of work. This full time doctoring is really getting in the way of my drinking and training regimen.

Cross Bloody Cross!

Well the cross season has started and no I didn’t quite get off on the right pedal stroke. I’m not going to write about my first race I’ve erased it from my memory and moved on! I had some quality reassurance from the legend that is Leda Cox and promptly forgot about it.

Since I last blogged I have done a week of what is known as “on call”! This isn’t what many people imagine. I don’t lounge around at home waiting to be called into the hospital to perform some life saving procedure and then head home for tea and medals after a quick shag with one of the sexy surgeons in a broom cupboard.

What actually happens is I turn up at 8am and I frantically “care” for anyone admitted for possibly needing emergency surgery. As you can imagine most of these people do not need an operation but every now and again I do get an actual case of appendicitis or something much worse that means being opened from top to toe! Mostly these are people with chronic pain, drug addicts looking for a free fix, young girls with period pains and old dears who can’t cope at home. Each patient takes me roughly an hour to sort out I work for 13hours and have approximately 30 admissions plus other assorted jobs. Some how the maths doesn’t add up. The senior doctors helping me involve one sitting in the mess watching sky sports, the other is a substitute who speaks very little english. I’m extremely surprised my hair hasn’t fallen out with the stress. Nurses were ringing me up about patients who had been starved for 6 hours and when were they going to have their operation!? HELLO NURSE ive been starved for 10hours! I have a constant stream of telephone calls from GPs who have to somehow ask my permission to send the patients in. I’m not sure who invented this service or why a person with years and years of experience has to ask me (a person with 6weeks experience) if a patient needs to come to hosptital. My main job is to make sure they send the person to the right place. Nearly all my patients have abdominal pain of some sort or another the most important thing for me to check is that the female patients are NOT pregnant. This is not as easy as you would think and I mainly work on the rule (like House) that everybody lies.  It is of no consequence to me that your husband has had a vasectomy I want to see a negative pregnancy test. You probably would not be surprised how many times that rule is proved to be true.

So at the end of hell week I remembered I also ride a bike and I also had a shit race the week before. So friday night I hopped on the turbo did my intervals and spent a great deal of time complaining about “how hard my life is” and then fell asleep. Saturday arrived and thankfully “cock of the moment” had excelled himself and fixed both my cross bikes and made them work beautifully. I have to say I felt awful saturday morning but the course was hard and fast much more my kind of thing I rode as best as I could I didn’t embarrass myself but I didn’t rock the cyclocross world. I’m still lacking the confidence needed to ride hard and fast over the technical stuff, I need some more practise and a bit more fitness. I could also do without legs that hurt from not being able to sit down for 61hours that week. But I did prove to myself that no matter how hard my week is I’ve still got a bit left for the bike.

I rode yesterday with some strong men and I did an expert impression of the Chopper cyclist. I was dropped on all the big climbs but won all the town sign sprints (that no one knew we were racing for until I was halfway up the road).

Out of all this there has been an exciting bit of news! no I’m not pregnant – do you honestly think I managed to fit sex into all that!

I’ve been asked to ride for Team Mule Bar Girls. I’m uber excited for this I secretly have always wanted to be a mule bar girl. I’m just praying they don’t find out how slow I am on a bike.  This means I am now the proud owner of a very sleek sexy skin suit. I’ve never had a skinsuit before and I have been tempted to wear it all the time but because it is long-sleeved it doesn’t agree with the hospital policy of bare below the elbows.