Hi everyone, Matt here.  I’m feeling more comfortable as a blog writer at the keyboard now, but it still feels strange to say that I have a wife, ‘wifey’, as I've been calling my darling Flo.  I’ve also got some exciting professional nursing events ahead of me, that I will tell you about in a minute.  Our wedding was the best day of my life!  My darling Flo took my breath away as she glided down the aisle. I will never forget that smile on her sweet face as she looked straight at me, with nothing but love and adoration at the altar. The highlight was the mother in law’s face when she saw the pork pie cake! Only kidding, that was just one of the many highlights.  Then again, I did have my doubts. No, I didn’t, that’s also rubbish. The only doubt I had was whether I would make it on time, as Ben aka ‘The Best Man’ decided to take me on a wild goose chase pub crawl the night before. It seemed like a good idea at the time but by about 6pm, I was ...

Well, what a month! I’ve finally learnt that the world doesn’t revolve around me (hard to believe folks!) and that sometimes I’ve just got to step off my own rollercoaster and step onto someone else’s… I’m loathe to say ‘Poor Matt’ because that would mean that I feel sorry for him – I don’t. I feel for him, and that’s different altogether. My big strong, gorgeous, funny, loyal Matt is having a toughtime as I’m sure you all know and I’m so relieved that he’s been able to share how he’s feeling. At first, I was a bit gutted that he’d opened up to you guys before he sat down and spilled his guts to me, but like I say…it’s not about me. I can empathise though. I know how it feels to wake up with your stomach churning and that feeling of pending doom; that feeling of complete dread that stays with you until the end of the shift when a sense of euphoria takes over, as you realise you’ve survived another day. That unreasonable, sensitive you that could burst into tears at any mom...

It’s been another plate-spinning fortnight, but guess what? Some of those plates have now been spun into their rightful place and things are looking good. My first piece of news is that I got the job!! I am now a very proud Band 6 nurse! Steve called me (eventually) to give me the news. The rumours were right, there were two posts and I got one of them! Steve told me that the other successful candidate was pretty much the opposite of me in that she was quiet, steady and sensible. If I hadn’t been so ecstatic, I might have felt a bit insulted but as it was, all I felt was complete elation. I rang Carla as soon as I got off the phone to Steve and she couldn’t do anything but scream! I honestly couldn’t have done this without the encouragement, support and belief of both Steve and Carla. My second piece of news is that the wedding plans are almost complete; everything has been ordered or arranged. Ironically, the only thing to buy now is the Dragon Mother’s outfit. As you would...

Just call me Jennifer Ennis. I’m sure that’s who the world thinks I am with all these hurdles that are being put in front of me. It started when I received the letter, inviting me for an interview for the Band 6 position on the ward. When I say ‘interview’, what I really mean is ‘interrogation’. Not satisfied that us mere mortals should sweat for a solid hour through a traditional interview, the powers that be have decided that selection of the fittest should consist of an assessment centre – whatever that means. Once I’d peeled myself off the ceiling, I went in search of Matt who is usually the voice of reason. Unfortunately, not this time. I’m sure he took my place on the ceiling.  He’d got his Band 6 position late last year and hadn’t had to jump through hoops this size. We looked at it together to try to decipher the size of this task. There would be a written assessment, based on a fictitious patient, to test my clinical skills. Then there was the role pla...

It’s official – I have the best boyfriend/fiancé ever! I’ve been a bit down over the past couple of weeks. I keep thinking about Gloria and doing the ‘what if’ bit...what if I’d picked up her symptoms sooner…would she still be alive? What if a different nurse had been on duty that day? Would they have picked up Gloria’s deterioration quicker than I did? I must be driving Matt mad with it, because it’s all I can think about. It’s made me super-vigilant at work though, and I’m looking at every patient through sepsis-tinted glasses. Matt’s so patient though and wanted to cheer me up. So, when I arrived home from work one night, he had taken all the shiny new certificates from all of the courses I’ve recently completed, framed them and put them up on the wall in the dining room! He’d even put up my Slimming World certificate, proudly announcing the loss of a whole stone of fat! I have to be honest, it’s been more of a ‘Slimming Plate’ diet combination as I’ve been follow...

The investigation into ‘CadburyGate’ is now complete. I have to say, I have never experienced anything so surreal in my entire life – in fact, I’m starting to think that I’ve been living in the twilight zone for the last fortnight and those little green men are going to whisk me off into the ether to care for sick aliens…more like little green-eyed monsters wearing a nurses uniform are going to find other ways of sticking the knife in.  You may remember a gorgeous patient that we had on the ward called Helen. All she wanted before she died was to experience one last Christmas. So, with a lot of help from various people around the hospital and her daughter, we brought Christmas forward for her. Not a day too soon either, because later that night she died. Anyway, Helen’s daughter was so touched by what we had arranged for her Mum, that she’d gifted the ward with a huge (and I mean huge) chocolate hamper and a thank you card that mentioned me by name. The next thing I kno...

I’ve had mixed feelings about Christmas this year… On the happy side, it was mine and Matt’s first Christmas together!! Like proper grown-ups! We both worked on Christmas Day so we decided that Christmas dinner/supper is going to be chicken and chips (home-made of course to mark the special occasion), followed by a share tub of Ben & Jerrys (is there such a thing as a share tub?) and a few glasses of fizzy stuff! We both worked on boxing day too so we daren’t indulge too much.  On the ‘what have I done to deserve this?’ side, on the Christmas rota it would appear that I’m working almost every shift with Jo. Cos it’s Christmas, it’s a pretty scant rota and Steve is helping us all out by working as a nurse, rather than in his usual Charge Nurse role, but he’s basically having Christmas off and working New Year….happy days…not! Jo is furious with me after I arranged for a dying patient to have one last Christmas. We received a huge hamper of chocolate from her daughte...

I am officially loved up! My dates (yes dates, plural) with Matt have been awesome and so it was with a spring in my step that I returned to work last Monday after my annual leave. I must have looked a proper gorm, smiling from ear to ear with that faraway look in my eyes. In fact, during handover one of the nurses asked me if I’d been overdosing on Krispy Kremes for breakfast again!  I couldn’t wait to see my patients in Eden Bay. A couple of my ladies had been discharged, but I had new ones to get to know and then there was the die-hards – the ladies who seemed to have been there forever but who never failed to keep me on my toes. It was lovely to see them again and even more lovely when they told me that they’d missed me. Jo wasn’t on duty my first day back so I was quite relaxed and spent time catching up with my patients’ progress and finding out what I could about my new admissions. I was regaling them with tales of my dates with Matt and we were having a proper...