A Caring Doctor

A lot of people say that I care a little too much for my patients. I'll stay late to talk to relatives, hold patients hands while they are scared and shed a little tear sometimes when I'm home. I also care a lot for my friends, I find I'm often driving around on errands or having little cheer-up missions because although it sounds incredibly cheesy, it genuinely makes me happy to make other people happy. It's what I like to think of as a nice form of selfishness.

Recently I've let myself get a bit run down. I've had tummy aches, I've been tired, but most of all I have been grumpy as hell. I decided rather than moping, moaning and feeling sorry for myself, I should probably pull my finger out and do something about it. I needed to care for myself.

Step 1 was to register with a GP. Did that. Went to the registration appointment where the HCA basically called me a fat, lazy alcoholic. This is really unfair and quite innaccurate. I'm a binge drinker, not an alcoholic.

Step 1 failed. I didn't feel any better.

On to Step 2.

A girly night.

I hadn't had a proper girly night for ages. Don't get me wrong, I love nights out with a big mixture of people and spending weekends with the boyf are sometimes the only thing that keeps me going through a tough day in the week... but this time things were critical. I needed the girls.

The girls also needed me.

We've all had a bit of a stressful time recently. What with work, home dramas, family dramas and general life the 3 of us were a bit run down. With a little bit of co-ordinating we all managed to get together and it was AWESOME.

Saturday daytime we hit the shops and spent hrs trying on dresses and drinking coffee. We also all bought new PJs. We then hung out at the make-up counters and had a full makeover... leading us to part 2 of our girly time...

Curry!

Yes, curry and beer is a bit of a lad thing, so instead we had curry and wine... it was delicious. A couple of hours after arriving at the nicest Nepalese in town we left complete with food babies and high heels. Next stop was cocktails in my Dad's bar. Always awesome for a girly night as the presence of my Dad in the same room stops all the sleazy creeps chatting us up and means we can concentrate on what is important... judging everyone elses high heels.

In a true kickback to our younger years we then all changed into our PJs, piled into my bed and watched back to back Disney DVDs, crying our hearts out and singing along.

Granted I didn't do the revision I needed to do, nor did I finish my presentation for Tuesday but quite frankly I don't care. Sometimes a day chilling out can be worth a week of revision and I'll just have to do a bit more work tonight to get the presentation done. It was more than worth it.

This week I have another really busy schedule. Presentation Tuesday, new rotation Wednesday, first day of Medical on call on Wednesday and I have to get a move on with organising the final year mock OSCE. Thankfully I feel fully rejuventated after my weekend and then I have a 3 day weekend to look forward to. In fact I'm so chilled out that I can't even be grumpy about being on call on Easter Monday.

Dr Sunshine xXx