Both a teaching and a learning couple of weeks for me – just how I like it! The teaching part has been really interesting as I have had a student allocated to me. He’s in his second year and I was really keen to show him the ropes, introduce him to my ladies on Eden Bay and generally help him understand the often vast and complex needs of the older person. The Tom Hardy lookalike had other ideas….. It started off ok – he seemed keen to learn and asked lots of relevant questions, which was great for me too as it helped to test my knowledge. Then after a couple of days he started to get a bit flirty with me and after day 4 he was offering to wine and dine me. I very clearly explained that I was married but that even if I wasn’t, it would be highly inappropriate for me to get involved with one of the students and left it at that. Well, that went down like a bag of sick and Tom Hardy became the Kevin half of Kevin and Perry. I asked him to do things such as assist m...

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...

I’ve done it… I have finally come clean to Flo and you know what? It wasn’t as bad as I had imagined, albeit a few tears from both of us, but now my shoulders feel a lot lighter. It all came to a head when working the night shift. Things were going pretty smoothly, but it also felt like the calm before the storm. I went to check on a couple of new patients that had come in during the day, when it all went crazy (it wasn’t a full moon). Sandra, a younger woman with schizophrenia started shouting from the rooftops that her fella was trying to break in, cue her trying to escape; and so she started pushing and shoving her way through the ward, hitting the walls. This started some other patients off and you can imagine the rest. It was one of those shifts when you feel like you are in a dream and you can’t wait ‘til it’s over. I actually felt sorry for Sandra, and like her, at times I wanted to escape from it all. After going home feeling exhausted, I ended up sleeping on the couc...