My Real Life

Obviously, I don’t mean on MN, I mean my first post as a Mental Nurse (Having paid my £76 to the NMC).

I will be working as a staff nurse on an acute inpatient ward later this month. I was reading a post about job adverts earlier and spotted this as my new job description:

Acute Inpatient

Our trust is currently recruiting for a Band 5 RMN who’s decided they don’t like talking to patients after all, and would rather just be an office monkey. Key skills include doing cool trick shots off the ward pool table, rolling a ciggie while simultaneously talking on the phone to the consultant, and the ability to say “I’ll be with you in a minute” without making it sound too much like a bare-faced lie. Our recent adoption of the Care Programme Approach will provide you with vast reams of paperwork to fill out, thus sparing you the horror of ever having to interact with filthy unwashed patients.

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With all these intellectual, political and argumentative posts recently,  I have been losing interest in joining in the discussion. I’m finding it a little less a discussion and more like a my dads better than yours situation. I am quite sure that I am not alone, therefore I want to write a post about plain old mental health nursing. (Not that there is anything plain about it). Read the rest of this entry »

IMPORTANT NOTE - the letter that is between u and w in the alphabet doesn’t work on my keyboard! So it has been substituted for y. Why? Yes thats right, y. But why? Because it is physically similar to the untypable letter (etc…).

I don’t think I’m a real person you know. Maybe thats a bit harsh. Maybe I mean I’m just not a singular identity. More of a mishmash of ideas, thoughts, emotions, reflections and actions, that if you took a freeze frame shot of at any giyen time, would allegedly constitute a person.

But why the sudden existential malaise I hear you cry (in the barren wilderness)?

Because…

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Forewarning: This is likely to become a rant. Because if anyone MENTIONS the NHS & eating disorders, I rant. And hell, you asked

I could give you pages worth, & start at the beginning & all that, but lets face it, one rambling ‘woe is meeee!’ story is much like another, so we’ll skip to the vaguely relevant points, and if anyone wants me to fill in the gaps, I’ll talk your ears off then.

So, near the beginning. Early Summer 2000, I was 14, with a BMI at the time of about 14.5-15.5. After being taken to the doctors by my mother, who was understandably less than impressed at my refusal to eat anything, I was referred to Dr K of a Child & Adolescent Mental Health Unit (I intend to send her a very, very rude letter someday). I was initially open to this. If I’m honest, the eating disorder was a calculated, fully deliberate attempt at gaining psychiatric help, for the (respectively) less believable and socially acceptable problems of depression & self injury.

Dr K was awful. She reduced every member of my family to tears at one point or another – and again we let her. All we had was the Hollywood view of shrinks – that the more they touch nerves, the more they’re helping. And eventually it’ll ‘click’, there’ll be tears & hugs & you’ll be all fixed & ride off into the sunset. Ha!

For factual evidence, her appointments were generally about 2 weeks apart with nothing in-between – she spoke of organising weekly weigh ins & a nutritionist, but these never materialised. She’d set me homework – food diaries, pros & cons of seeing your dad – and never ask to see it. She argued with my answers to open questions like ‘you realise you’ll get too thin, right?’.
And here comes rant

#1 – you simply cannot BE that goddamn slack with a young teenager, initially presenting ED symptoms!

They’re thoroughly moody & hormonal, prone to shooting themselves in the foot just to mildly piss you off, they can go downhill fast, and most of all – you have the chance to nip this in the bud. Essentially save a life. You can save them or screw them, and there’s no margin for error.

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(An anonymous post)

I have an eating disorder. Not Bulimia or Anorexia but EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified). This means that I alternate between puking and starving. I also have rules. Bread has to be eaten in even numbers. Cake is evil. Carbohydrates are secretly plotting against me. Diet Coke is the elixir of youth and beauty.

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I thought it was only polite to properly introduce myself now I am listed as a contributor.

I am Bloo, a 2nd year Mental Health Student Nurse. I will start my final year in September ‘07. I have been visiting Mental Nurse for some time now, having not so recently changed my name. I fancied something different.

I often have trouble remaining (or even starting to be) serious, so expect some utter nonsense from me from time to time. I will hold back when posting here to try to keep up the excellent standard.

Now all we need is Mo to start posting regularly and this site will be fantastic instead of brilliant!

Oh, and you can see a photo of me here. Unfortunately I did not have on by Bloo uniform that day.

Back in 1980 when (due to a clerical error!) I accidentally ended up working in a psychiatric hospital, I was, like most newbies, nervous and very green behind the ears. I landed a job as a nursing assistant in a “rehab” ward. “Rehab” was of course a euphemism for “abandon all hope”. The ward I landed in was the end of the line in a chain of rehab wards. The chain started off with “acute rehab” where your 6 weeks to 6 months revolving door punters were shunted in and out. In the middle link of the rehab chain were the 30-60 year olds who had not been cured and had failed to rejoin society despite “acute rehab” and were now permanent (but accepted) residents in a colourful and fairly lively community where the unexpected often happened and a cigarette could buy you anything. I was however, inducted into the elephant’s graveyard at the very bottom end of this chain, “the departure lounge”. A place for the elderly, institutionalized, functionally ill to sit in a circle and finally get to smoke their cigarettes in peace while awaiting the undertaker. Many of these folks had spent all their adult lives in the bin, seen cultures, modes of treatment and various regimes come and go (both inside and outside the grounds).

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Hello Everyone,

I am really enjoying my break from my secret identity for a while. The current plan is for me to become more involved again at some point in the early New Year, possibly in a somewhat reduced capacity as malcolmroff and oldschool are doing such sterling work. I find their posts to be as interesting and thought provoking as anything I have read elsewhere.

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Well it is time to go

For real life reasons, unrelated to the site, I will be taking a complete break. For at least 3 months, at which point I will review my life and see what I intend to do next.

Stepping into my glittery dancing shoes will be oldschoolbaby and malcolmroff. Who can be reached via the following mail addresses:

remove the spaces etc. Any mail that gets to me will be directed to one of them, especially the offers to buy Viagara, of which I get many.

After the fold some gushy stuff.

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This is nothing to to with work, or much to do with mental health.

I was thinking about labeling people and terms like the ‘happy demented’. I was mentally composing a post about nurses use of verbal shorthand (shorthand ? hand, verbal ?) when I noticed something.

I had just been shopping for facial wipes and was standing around clutching my Body Shop carrier bag to my chest. I was nervous as I was in a somewhat … bad part of the city. I was looking around trying to look really tough and not like a mugging waiting to happen. The rain was pouring down and water was dripping down the back of my neck.

I saw a man. He was pulling on the door of a small car. He stared in through the driver’s side window. Tried the handle again. Took a few steps back. Tried the handle again.

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Always one to enjoy a good rant I give you another antiantipsychiatry post from Brad.

Hey, Anti-Psychiatry Activist!

I’d always thought that democracy was being abandoned for an orgy of consumerism and war. How wrong I was! According to the APC [Anti Psychiatry Coalition], it’s actually dying because of the injustices done to a small number of people abused by psychiatry.

Mental

I was sitting on a plane recently listening to the pre-flight safety lecture. I was watching the flight attendant doing her silent ballet. Then I listened to the words.

Captain: … in event of a water landing reach under your …

Ho hum I thought.

Then it clicked. Water landing … there is no such thing … a water landing must be pilot speak for a damp crash ! I spent the entire flight preparing for a sudden water landing.

This had me thinking about communication.

Recent conversation.

Old Man: Hello Mental.

Mental: Hello Old Man. How are you doing.

Old Man: So so. I have a high cholesterol level.

Mental: That sounds good, can’t have enough cholesterol I say !

Old Man: Shut up you prat ! The Doctor has put me on tablets for it.

Not doing too well so far.

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Well there I was reading a family members post mortem report; I now know how much their internal organs weighed. Shortly after that I received a text message from another family member telling me not to set myself on fire. This I thought was the average level of weirdness for the day.

Then I saw a short … advert ? … about self harm on the TV.

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Well that is it. Have just worked my last shift. I will be unemployed until
after Christmas. Then I will be starting a wonderful new life in nursing
home nursing.

That makes my career to date :

1. 3 Years as a project 2000 student

2. 19 Months working in acute mental health nursing

3. About four and a half years working in a community residential project. Which could be described as very slow rehab.

4. About six months in hospital ward based dementia care.

I find it a little strange that I lasted longer in acute, as a young innocent new nurse, than I lasted in elderly hospital care.

I will post about my most recent job at some point in the next few days. Then some months down the line I will probably post again in a more balanced way

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On the way home I looked out the window and thought:

Mental (inside brain): Oh look at that ! A field of tiny sheep !

I mentally listed what I had got up to on holiday.

1.

Conversation where I avoided mentioning just what kind of nurse I am.

Check.

Because every year I have this conversation; then the following statement is made:

Conversee: I don’t know how you can work with those kind of people.

That gives me a headache.

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