that when it snows, my eyes become large

im still married.

life has been pretty ok i guess. i realised today that i havent written in a while, and some pretty major life events have happened to me.

i took today off. just exhausted. and i had a semi-migraine on. and period pains. coupled with the fact that i WAS going to take yesterday off but felt guilty for leaving the other doc on her own…and then finding out the 3rd doc was there too…i decided to take today off. and it has been nice having a bed day. i do feel incredibly guilty though. but sometimes you just need a day to reboot. and i honestly am having pretty nasty period pains.

married life is pretty nice. i think we’re both quite good at loving each other in a supportive way. sometimes we fuck up, and we fight, but i dont have that fear of him abandoning me…it’s more an attitude of….”well im his wife, how can he treat me like that?”..its hard to explain, the hurt is easier to bare.

i still have panic attacks now and then. i managed to make myself acidotic at one point. that was scary. but those spirals are not what they used to be.

Work is work. i witnessed by first death. and it was the worst possible death i could have witnessed. let alone it being my first. it was not well handled. and his name is forever etched into my head. i suppose i should have debriefed on here. but i dont think it would have done much for me mentally. ST was supportive. and so was HT. AA was a bitch, and all she had to say was “it gets easier, and you get used to it”. not helpful. and not something i ever want to get used to. not much of the general public witness a death. especially one like that, and you have to be a very weird person to do so, and “be used to it”. the whole notion of it freaks me out. the idea of one day not flinching to an event such as his death. i tried so fucking hard to be strong. and to put it out of my mind. and i suppose my delayed reaction was not particularly healthy. but the way his body crumpled up, and his wife was screaming, and his eyes were bulging, and it looked almost like his oxygen mask melted against his face somehow. that was the scariest part. his face. i was almost in his line of sight, and i wonder in those last 5 seconds what he could actually see. and if he knew the oxygen mask had taken on the shape of his face entirely. and his wife was screaming, clutching to his urine-soaked pajamas. and the machine was bleeping. and the consultant asked his wife to please sit back, and the machines stopped bleeping, and suddenly there was just the sound of death and straining and final grasps of air. and then i flip back to what felt like an hour before, but was possibly just 5 mins, and he was demanding the crash team, and telling me he had been walking around last week, and he was stronger than this, and his daughter was only 10 and needed her dad. and then i forward to hearing just rasps of air coming from him. and almost begging the consultant to help me deal with this patient. and when he was crumpling up, and the wife was screaming and pleading, and frightened, and asked what was happening. and no one had an answer. we all just sort of looked at one another until the consultant said, calmly, he’s dying, let him die in peace.

i had this urge in me. a sudden vision of lying the bed flat. ordering a nurse to get the crash trolley, to listen to his chest, assess his pulse, start jumping on his heart and getting a machine to bring him back to life. bt i knew he wasnt for escalation. and i knew it would do no good. and i couldnt even open my mouth let alone co-ordinate a crash team response. i was just stuck. and frozen. and i wanted someone to tell me to leave so i didnt have to witness it all, but i knew i had to, because i would never know what it was otherwise. he had been in hospital about 4 times before. and each time i knew nothing about him. it had to be on this visit, and on that day that i was assessing him, that he decided it was done. it had to be that i was on the phone for almost half an hour trying to get a hold of his consultant. it had to be that i was on the ward alone with 2 other consultants on their ward rounds when he went off, and neither of them were keen to help. it just had to be that i was the last doctor that helped him through anything, and that i was possibly the most junior of the team, trying to deal with someone with lung cancer that was eating his lungs out, who didnt want to die, wasnt ready to die, and didnt want to accept that he was dying, despite several conversations with the consultant about it.

it just had to be me.

i ended up texting AA that he had died. and she came up. and after what felt like another hour, but was possibly only another 5 mins, we went back to the bedside. it was silent. and cold. and unresponsive. and we had to verify that he was dead. this man that had been so angry and confused and unaccepting of his imminent death, who died so violently in a hospital bed with his wife screaming at his side, was just a dead body now. that was it. he had been red in the face and hands, and his eyes had dark brown in them, and his veins had been full with blood….suddenly he was just…nothing. the whole area had been cleaned and he was tucked into the bed. his mouth was still open, presumably rigid from trying to take in the oxygen whilst dying. it was weird how quickly everything suddenly looked so different. there wasnt an ounce of movement like there had been for days before. even the air around seemed stiff. that sort of feeling in air just after snow has fallen in the middle of the night. or perhaps just before it is about to. like we were never there. like he had been lying like that for at least a day. but it had only been 10mins. his body didnt look crumpled any more.

dead bodies never look like they do on television, or even at funerals…they take on a plastic-kind-of-look then…but when it’s real.. the life is just gone completely. AA did the verifying. i stood there dumbfounded and scared. then she asked me to have a go at listening to his chest, so i knew what to listen for next time, because it can be confusing. and i leant across to listen. i was so sure he was going to grab my arm and demand to know what the fuck i did, and how i could have let this happen. i was so sure he was going to tell me that i wouldnt get away with it. but he didnt. it was weird that his chest wasnt moving. it was weird that he didnt respond when AA pressed a pen against his nail. it was weird when his eyes didnt respond to the light, and it was weird that his chest was silent. i was so sure he would wake up. and part of me was shit-scared of it, but part of me wanted him to, cos at least he might have another chance of living.

but after all that drama, and all the shock…he was just…dead.

that was the first night that i felt really cold driving home from work. it was like his death brought the end of summer. and perhaps my innocence.

<p style=”text-align: justify; “>i was meeting ST’s friends for dinner as well. i ended up getting home at 9.30pm. my shift hours are 9-5. i came home almost 5 hours late. but his friends were lovely. and i didnt need to talk about what had happened with them, because ST was supportive when i got home before we went to pick them up. and we spent the weekend eating loads of comfort food. i should have spent it drinking perhaps. but i am glad i had ST with me.

i have avoided my brother and sister entirely since i started work. just dont need the patronisation. eventually had to go home and see mum, she was missing me too much. i spoke to my dad about what had happened at work, and he sympathised, and told me it was sad that he had died that way. he didnt dismiss it. he was taking on the role of supportive, doctor dad…rather than calculative money-minded dad…i prefer doctor dad. doctor dad is why i decided to want to be a doctor in the first place. my brother had already tried to press me for how incompentent i was as a new doctor prior to dad coming home.

we had already changed the subject when he came into the room, and he tried to broach the subject of me being a doctor in front of my dad again, asking all the same inane questions he had already asked previously in front of him- as if to impress my father with how stupid i was, and how much better he was…my dad told him to keep quiet. because we all knew he was being assanine, and what my brother fails to realise is that i can have mature conversations with my father, and not be classed as an idiot, and be able to move on from the topic rather than sit and stew and prove how shit everyone is compared to him.

he is a royal twat. and sometimes i really wonder if my parents are aware of their other children and just how stupid they are. my mother has blind love for them, as she should i guess, but only if it doesnt harm herself. and from time-to-time it does. and wish she could rise above it and be able to iterate how important she is to them, but she just takes their shit, and carries on loving them regardless. but that is mothers.

my dad however…he is an intelligent man. calculative, but charming…he is a doctor. and has been for over 35 years. he should be able to read people, and hes calculative enough to not blindly love someone the way my mother does.

he must realise how dysfunctional they are. and when he sees how secure and mature ST and I are, and how far forward we are moving with our live…he must see how static my siblings are. i wonder if he pities my brother.

it’s almost like he only promotes and helps the weak. and for me, where it feels like he doesnt give a shit, he doesnt because he doesnt need to. he doesnt feel a need to run around telling everyone that i graduated from a top university. he doesnt need to brag about me marrying a good decent guy with a good income who makes me happy. but he does need to tell everyone how intelligent my brother is, and how much money he is earning, and how great my cousin is, and how talented she is at her job.

my brother is not as intelligent as i have been led to believe my whole life. and my cousin is a joke. but my dad still puts them up on this imaginary pedestal. but then moments like when he tells my brother to keep quiet when it comes to my abilities as a doctor, not outright- but subtle- i sort of think…hang on- if he really thought the sun shone out his ass, why is he telling him to be quiet? cos he knows it doesnt. and he knows that his opinion is not important. and it’s sad my dad thinks that way. but 80% of the time he is calculative money-minded dad. and sometimes i see that 20% glimmer of doctor-dad. like when he recognised i had depression. and tried to tell AM in a subtle way to just look after me. and then the following week calculative money-minded dad decided that it had to be a medicine that was causing me to be so depressed, not the way i had been treated by my sister and AM. doctor-dad knew the truth, money-minded dad didnt want to accept i was truly depressed, and tried to cover it all up.

my sister is just an idiot. i havent got the time to think about how shit of a person she is.

my cousin is pregnant. which is going to change the entire dynamic of my home and house. we will have to see how it all pans out. i wondered just now if i was doing that thing i did when i was a teenager and not talking about the reality of the situation with what is happening with my cousin. i dont think i am. my dad knows he needs to hire another accountant. but she is a greedy-ass bitch and getting paid £100,000. she clearly doesnt respect her husband, and doesnt realise what this baby means, and wants to continue working 24/7 for my dad. which aint gonna happen when she has a baby lying around. she is not that high up in her line of profession, or even that respectable that she can expect her husband to be a stay-at-home dad, or that my mum would be the loving grandparent to help out. not happening. so she will need to wise-up. and soon. im glad my mum is being vocal about it as well (albeit without my dad’s knowledge), but at least in front of other family members.

i upgraded my phone.

i guess that’s all that has happened really.