Thursday 26 July 2007

Funerals, flooding, rotas and toothache...a random mixture!

Back home now, Oxford was pretty flooded and I've heard it got worse after I left which is bad - Aaron and I went to look at his next house (his lease is up in August) which was on the other side of one of the flooded streets, so we had to take our shoes and socks off and roll up our jeans and wade through it all! Aaron's house is ok, not flooded, but some of his old flatmates had to move out of their new house because of the flooding - it's pretty bad down there.

Aaron has a hard time staying away from scary situations! When we were in Israel last summer, we got bombed by a couple of katyusha rockets on our first day, and, rather than going to a shelter (there weren't any) or a basement or something, we all went to the roof to have a good look! Not content with this, Aaron was all for running down the hill to where the rocket hit to have a look - he was the same with the flooding, couldn't stay away in the safe bit but had to go wading in! Nutter...

Anyway, no trains were running but I managed to get a lift up to Birmingham with my dad who was travelling from Heathrow for the funeral. All a bit complicated, but got there in the end.

The funeral was my dad's uncle's, but he was only 62 and it was pretty sudden so quite sad. It went as well as could be expected though, and I got to spend some time with my dad's aunt and cousins (who are more my age - there's a big gap between siblings so the generations are a bit mixed up) which was really good. It's a shame about the circumstances though.

And now, I'm back home with horrible toothache so I'm going to the dentist tomorrow - is it acceptable to be scared of dentists when you're a doctor?! I just hate the noises and I hate having stuff in my mouth and I REALLY hate then putting needles in my gums, there's no squidge there! Will stop being a wimp though, I need to go and get my dodgy tooth sorted...

Oh, I said I'd mention my rota...briefly, it's a bit weird - I start with 2 days annual leave which is annoying when I already feel like I'm on death row, I just want to get started! Then I seem to be working 4 weekends of the next 8, and I have several days of 'zero hours' which I assume are days off, but I think they are just to keep the rota a bit more compliant than it would be otherwise. Still, it seems a bit all-or-nothing - I work a lot of long shifts in a row, then a weekend, then I have a few days off. I don't know what the other people on my ward's rotas are like, I guess they are pretty similar. Very strange!

4 comments:

Aiky said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Dr Joey said...

aiky, don't be offended, i only deleted your comment because it mentioned the city i'm in and i've been careful not to for confidentiality and stuff, nothing personal! looking forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks then. i'm working next weekend tho so not that one! xx

Kelly said...

That's a bit of a sod getting annual leave on your first days at work! Still, you will be in the thick of it soon enough. Rota sounds a bit evil.

Hope you enjoy your first few weeks as a doc. I can't imagine what I will be like if/when I reach your stage - excited and terrified all at once I expect.

Oh, and hope you've got the offending tooth sorted out. Toothache is evil :-(

XE said...

It's perfectly acceptable to be scared of dentists when you're a doctor! Hope that your tooth is feeling better -- nothing like a toothache to ruin a perfectly good day.