What a Difference A Day Makes

After my grumpy post last time I did indeed go home and curl up on the sofa with knitting and hot chocolate. I have nearly finished my jumper now, just have the neck band to put on, although I have to do a bit of repair work on it because in my eagerness to see what it would be like I managed to undo the stitch holder and a whole load of live stitches slipped off it. It has been gingerly put down until I can take a crotchet hook to it to pull the stitches back up, else the whole thing is going to unravel :-s I did buy some Sirdar Crofters self fair-isling wool to make some tank tops for when this silly jumper finished.

Oh, and the final verdict is that I love the jumper, it’s very me: nice and long in the sleeve and short on the body, so now I just hope I can rescue it! I also used a bit of retail therapy over the weekend too, and bought some super comfy new black heels for work, and a backpack with laptop compartment for uni. Also quite excited because I noticed some more things have gone off my Amazon wishlist.

When my alarm went off Monday I was super happy for some reason. I opened the curtain, saw the beautiful, blazing sunshine and was wide awake with the first alarm, whereas I’m normally still groggily trying to sneak a few more minutes of sleep by my third alarm, 20 minutes later. I would like to think that when I’m doing a job I actually want to do and enjoy, getting up won’t be such a struggle as it is now. Hopefully. I was early to work, and even though I was on my own all day because the rest of my bank of desks was on holiday, I was smiley and happy all day.

Today was completely different. I opened the curtains and it was grey and miserable. No wide awake bean raring to get up and start the day here. I wasn’t too late for work, only about 10 minutes, and as long as you do 7 hours a day and are here between the core 10-3 hours, they don’t mind. I did my morning reports and then an Internet Explorer window opened and started loading. Three seconds later and another one opened. And another, and another. As fast as I was shutting them, they were opening more. I got 65 windows in the end, which I thought was quite impressive. Ever get the feeling today isn’t going to work?

I had my blood test scheduled for thismorning, so off I poddled, straight in to the nurses room, on goes the tourniquet and the nurse asks if I have any problems having my blood taken. I explain not really, but I do have quite a low pain threshold. She says she's the same, so she’ll be gentle. She started tapping an odd vein I thought, not the normal one I get my bloods taken from, but the cephalic, further over. I looked away for the scratch and when I looked back because it seemed to be taking a long time, there’s no blood going into the tube and she’s wiggling the needle and digging it deeper and deeper into my arm. I can see the vein is going diagonally across my cubital fossa just under the skin, but she seems to be putting the needle vertically up my arm. She eventually gets a little dribble by waving the needle and sometimes it orientates in the same direction as the vein, quarter fills the tube, and grabs another tube to fill. I asked what the second tube was for because I was there for a Hep B surface antigen test. She says one is for a full blood count and one is for ferratin levels. I corrected her and I guess that threw her a bit because when she went to take the needle out she yanked it straight up out of my arm, rather than drawing the needle out of the same path it went in by. Suffice to say, it’s quite painful now, and I’ve had to drop out of rowing tonight because I can’t really bend my arm without it being painful. Rather than having a nice neat little dot, I have two large dots, a centimetre apart and a line joining them, like a cat scratch. She smiled at me as I was leaving and said she hopes I recover and isn’t it funny how it’s always the people with the low pain threshold who it’s hard to get blood from. I’ve never had a problem before…. o_0 I will be very surprised if I get the right test done after all that, though I did tell her a few times. I really hope she was having an off day and not like that all the time. Ah well, I guess bad experiences will only make me a better Dr, since I’ll know what it feels like. I went to Sainsbury’s on the way back to work and got a pain au chocolat for being a brave bean at the Dr’s :) The afternoon is so far bringing lots of computer crashes, email server’s down and it’s raining. Today def should have been a duvet day. Although, I have found this interesting website, which looks promising. I have to admit the idea of MTAS scares me a little, since it doesn’t seem to have had the best track record. The week can only get better, right?