I'm back!!

So the first posts were clearly me trying to understand the new role I’d taken on. I was very pensive and overwhelmed. A bit of soul searching was needed and you were there to listen. For that I am grateful.

NOW! However, I have totally got to grips with the fact I help people live, or help them die and that usually comes with obstacles, most of which are manageable. Most of which everyone outside of this spectrum of care, avoids thinking about unless, they have to, or I tell them in great gruesome detail!

From here I will be referring to a list of things I’ve jotted down in the last three months that are a ‘must’ to include here. Then, the idea is that this will get the ball rolling for me to be speedier with keeping you up to date. I might even start doing it in real time now I’m getting used to owning a smart phone!

This first story could have done with a blog to itself! And has actually already drawn to a close; it all started one afternoon as a helpful student. I went downstairs to the basement. One of my favourite places to pay a visit to as the kitchen and linen stores are down there so you always come back with goodies. Albeit spare towels or the all-important kosher meal that didn’t come up with the lunch trolley, these things will always make your day go by easier. Anyway! I don’t remember what exactly I was doing down there but a friendly old man offered me some biscuits as I was about to get into the lift again. I politely refused as I assumed he was talking about the mini packs of biscuits we give to the patients and I know precisely where my wards own stash of those is and I probably didn’t need much more temptation for the day. Later in the week, our paths crossed again. This time he was quick enough to push a packet of South African biscuits into my hand which I gratefully received and made my way back up to the ward having made a friend of the old man. I’ll call him Ronald. He told me he had a friend who works for some airline, so he had a good supply of South African goodies.
After this I would see him more and more often on my ward filling up the linen cupboard. I would always ask him how he was and wish him a good day. He was very forward but I just took him as a lonely old man and went along with it. This always gets me into trouble!!
Next he asks for my number. I’m very clear here! He can’t have my number, or my Facebook, I don’t want to message him or call him outside of work like he suggests we might. However, he keeps pushing and it’s getting awkward, so I settle and give him my email address. I leave feeling a bit odd, but all together just a bit sorry for an old man trying to make inappropriately young friends and brush it off.
He starts bringing me more and more food, including massive apples, beef jerky and really tasty drinks which I look forward to the most, and always biscuits! Each time I tell him, that I have food and that it’s very kind but he needn’t make the effort. I don’t really put up a fight though because, I won’t lie, I’m a sucker for free food! And it’s better than the dry crackers and wilted salad I have instore most days. He pushes the food into my hands telling me that if noone else is going to look after me then he will have to. I think I let him get away with more than I would have done others probably by a cultural bias; he is from the west of Africa, and I didn’t want to offend him, as I would anyone,  by obstinately denying his efforts of friendship.
Soon, however, he suggests I might be the kind of girl who likes perfume, and as it approaches the festive season, what I might like for Christmas. Both times I am very quick to shut him down and let him know how inappropriate I think that would be.
People around the ward are starting to get wind of this weird friendship and minor obsessive behaviour of Ronald’s. They just encourage him though. By telling him whether or not I’m working and where he can find me. One day I make quite a scene over not wanting to accept his last dogeared business card as I will not ever use the details on it, which caught the attention of a lovely occupational therapist who found the whole situation hilarious, as most others do when they hear it. After one super creepy encounter of him wrapping his arms around me and SNIFFING me in, I decide that this is way over the line. I will somehow have to make it stop!
Except, I was clueless. I hate having to put people down and basically never ever do it and just accept the consequences. One fine day just into the New Year I had the fantastic help of a patient’s daughter, whom I had got rather close to as she was always around. I had told her my predicament after seeing him come on the ward, and thankfully miss the sight of me. He would be back later to check again to my whereabouts though, as always. She gave me the harsh words I needed to hear, as did her mother, my patient!
After carrying around the heavy dread in my stomach all morning I see him, unavoidably, as I walk between my patients’ rooms busily looking at their folders to avoid his gaze. Ronald proudly presents the ominous brown paper bag all my gifts of food come in, and declares that this time it’s from his holiday he’s just returned from in America. With the words of my patient in my head I squeak out my excuses for not accepting his thoughtful gift, ready for the wave of the usual excuses and reasons I should take this from him. To my relief and simultaneous guilt, he stalks away with barely a word. Just like that. Maybe he sensed my pumped up determination or he was in a sensitive mood, but it worked!! I haven’t seen him since!! I have been working nights and weekends which is a major factor in that… but nonetheless, my guilt has faded and I may miss the constant flow of biscuits, but one less creep in one’s life is always for the best!! And my fear of becoming a fat nurse is a little further away now too!

My new mantra; it’s tough, but I am too!

I’ll leave this post there. Poor Ronald, he deserves a standalone dedication at least!