(no subject)
I had to eat some lychees today because they were going to die. It's england v columbia and I'm not extremely bothered.
I'm so unmotivated for work! My friend Helen came round ostensibly to do Obs and Gynae related work. Instead we shifted mp3s around various drives, she fell into a temporary Mario Kart stupor, I prepared dinner which included a spiced (with this spice my mum calls amchoor and which I'm not sure I've used appropriately because the spuds ended up tasting only of spud) potato curry, plus some chicken curry and rice and cucumbers; and the lychees. Then my housemate tried to convince me that I was an assassin, which process itself took ages. He didn't succeed. I'm not going to do his dirty work for him.
As a result, how much Obs and Gynae do I know? Not a huge lot more than I did when I got home - and I'm sure the stuff I watched on Holby City tonight set me back somehow. Although Nando did try a Fibroids 101 sermon after the assassin bit.
I went on a home visit with an Early Start midwife last week. (Do you know what Early Start is? It's a service that was started with reasonably good intentions, albeit with dodgy pilot implementation, to under-5s and their families in low income areas. Well anyway.) The midwife was like, I've been putting this visit off for ages because the I heard the lady only recently came over from Poland so I was afraid of going without an interpreter, but when I called her, her English was ok.
So we walked to this house, and a woman answered the door, and she was Polish. She was 37 weeks gone, and it turns out that her husband, a Nigerian-Arabic man - and her family in Poland had been against the match, was in custody. The midwife asked whether it was to do with any violent crime, and she was like oh nononononono, and immediately went and brought out some photos of him to show us, saying he was a good man. She had an 18 month old boy, and knew NO ONE else in this country. No relatives, or friends, or anyone. She was so completely isolated, and was worried about who'd look after her son while she was in hospital giving birth.
On top of everything else, it turns out the house she was living in belonged to an associate of her husband's, who may or may not have been getting paid by the husband, and whom she isn't paying now, and who is now encouraging her to move out. So there's a possibility of her being evicted too. She's written to her mum to come over and help with the baby, but she's scared that this associate won't be too pleased with an additional person in the house.
All the income she's getting is Child Tax Returns, she's approached the council for housing, but they aren't sure whether her immigration status entitles her to any help with this.
Plus there's stuff with the 18 month old, including his developmental checks, which have been on some kind of hold because his Polish records, which his mum very efficiently has with her, apparently have to be professionally translated before they can be compared with his London ones.
This was easily the most awful consultation I've seen in ages - not since doing Psych. I just felt so, so, so sorry for her. It must be almost the worst thing ever, being in a foreign country, with no money, no house, and almost no language. AND a small child, AND a husband in custory, AND be up the duff and due soon. But it was good that the midwife had at least some constructive help to offer her. Social serivces can apparently look after the kid when she's having her baby. And there's an Eastern European women's group in the area that she can be put in touch with - apparently Early Start have a 'parental liaison worker' whose job it is to befriend parents, which is clearly what she needs most now, some kind of social support structure. And all the housing and income stuff'll have to be sorted through by Early Start.
At one point the lady received a phone call, and it was her husband, and the midwife was talking to her husband, and then the husband's solicitor down the phone. We didn't understand fully why he'd been arrested, but he was due for a hearing.
And at the end? When we were preparing to leave - the kid had been just playing around our feet and looking at us curiously and talking at us with 18 month-old words (his mum said he was trilingual in understanding Arabic and Polish and English) happily - his demeanour changed completely and he started to look sad and shake his head and then start crying. He was, like, beckoning us to sit back down. You know how small children like having company round the house? It was sad. He literally had had no one visit him - it was just him and his mum all day.
Man how terrible. How do you solve situations like that? I just kept thinking the most useless thought - that I know a Polish person called Karolina who is nice and probably wouldn't mind translating and/or making friends with this lady.
Suddenly new doctors I'm meeting are all You're going to be working in a year and a bit, so I expect you to be responsible for your own learning bla bla. A year and a bit. I mean, it wasn't long ago that I was 'halfway through your training'. I don't know how prepared I am.
I'm so unmotivated for work! My friend Helen came round ostensibly to do Obs and Gynae related work. Instead we shifted mp3s around various drives, she fell into a temporary Mario Kart stupor, I prepared dinner which included a spiced (with this spice my mum calls amchoor and which I'm not sure I've used appropriately because the spuds ended up tasting only of spud) potato curry, plus some chicken curry and rice and cucumbers; and the lychees. Then my housemate tried to convince me that I was an assassin, which process itself took ages. He didn't succeed. I'm not going to do his dirty work for him.
As a result, how much Obs and Gynae do I know? Not a huge lot more than I did when I got home - and I'm sure the stuff I watched on Holby City tonight set me back somehow. Although Nando did try a Fibroids 101 sermon after the assassin bit.
I went on a home visit with an Early Start midwife last week. (Do you know what Early Start is? It's a service that was started with reasonably good intentions, albeit with dodgy pilot implementation, to under-5s and their families in low income areas. Well anyway.) The midwife was like, I've been putting this visit off for ages because the I heard the lady only recently came over from Poland so I was afraid of going without an interpreter, but when I called her, her English was ok.
So we walked to this house, and a woman answered the door, and she was Polish. She was 37 weeks gone, and it turns out that her husband, a Nigerian-Arabic man - and her family in Poland had been against the match, was in custody. The midwife asked whether it was to do with any violent crime, and she was like oh nononononono, and immediately went and brought out some photos of him to show us, saying he was a good man. She had an 18 month old boy, and knew NO ONE else in this country. No relatives, or friends, or anyone. She was so completely isolated, and was worried about who'd look after her son while she was in hospital giving birth.
On top of everything else, it turns out the house she was living in belonged to an associate of her husband's, who may or may not have been getting paid by the husband, and whom she isn't paying now, and who is now encouraging her to move out. So there's a possibility of her being evicted too. She's written to her mum to come over and help with the baby, but she's scared that this associate won't be too pleased with an additional person in the house.
All the income she's getting is Child Tax Returns, she's approached the council for housing, but they aren't sure whether her immigration status entitles her to any help with this.
Plus there's stuff with the 18 month old, including his developmental checks, which have been on some kind of hold because his Polish records, which his mum very efficiently has with her, apparently have to be professionally translated before they can be compared with his London ones.
This was easily the most awful consultation I've seen in ages - not since doing Psych. I just felt so, so, so sorry for her. It must be almost the worst thing ever, being in a foreign country, with no money, no house, and almost no language. AND a small child, AND a husband in custory, AND be up the duff and due soon. But it was good that the midwife had at least some constructive help to offer her. Social serivces can apparently look after the kid when she's having her baby. And there's an Eastern European women's group in the area that she can be put in touch with - apparently Early Start have a 'parental liaison worker' whose job it is to befriend parents, which is clearly what she needs most now, some kind of social support structure. And all the housing and income stuff'll have to be sorted through by Early Start.
At one point the lady received a phone call, and it was her husband, and the midwife was talking to her husband, and then the husband's solicitor down the phone. We didn't understand fully why he'd been arrested, but he was due for a hearing.
And at the end? When we were preparing to leave - the kid had been just playing around our feet and looking at us curiously and talking at us with 18 month-old words (his mum said he was trilingual in understanding Arabic and Polish and English) happily - his demeanour changed completely and he started to look sad and shake his head and then start crying. He was, like, beckoning us to sit back down. You know how small children like having company round the house? It was sad. He literally had had no one visit him - it was just him and his mum all day.
Man how terrible. How do you solve situations like that? I just kept thinking the most useless thought - that I know a Polish person called Karolina who is nice and probably wouldn't mind translating and/or making friends with this lady.
Suddenly new doctors I'm meeting are all You're going to be working in a year and a bit, so I expect you to be responsible for your own learning bla bla. A year and a bit. I mean, it wasn't long ago that I was 'halfway through your training'. I don't know how prepared I am.