I'm feeling a little better recently, the side effects of the PEP seem to have subsided somewhat - and I'm getting bored, so I may be going back to work shortly.

I have my second date with occupational health on Friday, for a blood test to make sure that the PEP isn't battering my liver/kidneys/pancreas and that my white cell count hasn't lowered. Work have said they'll do everything they can to supply a vehicle to get me down to SE London.

I've been thinking a bit about the "donor"; I wonder how he feels - he's laying in bed after having a rather frightening collapse in the street, with a broken jaw and the reason for the collapse unknown. Then a couple of days later the medical team ask him to consent to some more blood tests because he may have infected the EMT who helped him out.

If it were me I'd be absolutely mortified.

So when I talk to the occupational health I'll ask them if they can get a message back to him, letting him know that I'm fine and that I don't blame him for anything. I know his name and address, but I don't think it'd be right to turn up on his doorstep to talk to him.

I hope he is alright and that the collapse was something simple - I suspect a TIA, which can be a precursor to a stroke, but with the right meds hopefully the threat of that can be controlled.

This new bridge will mean I'll have to go to jobs "sarf of the river". I don't like crossing the Thames - it's not natural...

(I don't expect anyone other than Londoners to understand this post - so don't worry if you think you are missing something).

Sorry, I'm going to moan...

The problem with shift work is just that - you work shifts, in my case I work rotating shifts which means that one week I'm working nights, the next I'm working days, etc..

Normally this isn't a problem, as I find it fairly easy to flip over from nights, back to days; for example...

My last night shift ends on 07:00 on a Tuesday, so I stay awake until 22:00 on the Tuesday before going to sleep. Then I wake up around 10:00 Wednesday morning, and laze around until my day shifts on Friday at 07:00.
This makes me feel crap all day Tuesday - but that is the price I pay.

I've been off work now for nine days - and I've had my body clock set on "Day". However, I suspect due to my pills, I've found myself sleeping fourteen hours some nights - and so I've ended up with my body clock thinking that I'm working nights.

So while the weather outside looks lovely (in the few daylight hours I'm awake) I'm sleeping through it. To be honest I don't think I'm in a fit state to reset my body clock to "day", so I'm just going to wait it out, maybe it'll reset on it's own, similar to the way it has slipped in the first place.

Oh, and the flatulence is reaching epic proportions, which coupled with the diarrhoea makes every bowel motion an adventure!

www.HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk tells us that more people have visited the Lincolnshire Echo webpage than there are people living in Lincolnshire.

All because of this...


Apparently there is a "storm of controversy" about this poster showing a "dead girl". Personally I think it's a good poster - it's eye-catchingly simple, rather haunting and the picture itself has been treated to make it even more unusual. Apparently the Lincolnshire Echo has devoted over five pages to the issue of this poster appearing on a bus stop. 18% of people asked thought it should be banned. The story was apparently picked up by Fark which resulted in the large number of website hits.

Shaun of the Dead looks a more promising film actually.

You may notice I'm still having trouble stringing a sentence together. This is true and I make no apologies.

Well, Saturday was the last day I worked but GreenFairy mentioned something that I wanted to write about - but forgot, for some bizarre reason...
The first call of Saturday was to a "?suspended"

"?Suspended" means "Query Suspended" which means that the patient might be suspended (a.k.a "dead")- we don't know, they might just be asleep, or drunk, or have a high temperature, or a cut finger but the person calling us is a twit

So we hack along the road, knowing full well that because it is the first job of the day the patient is definitely going to be dead.

We arrive at the house and the Rapid Response Car is there before us - so I grab my kit and bound up the stairs past the daughter who called us and into the bedroom.
Where a very dead lady was laying on the bed while the Rapid Responder was completing his paperwork.

One look is all you need to tell if someone has been dead for sometime - and this lady had that look. It turned out that the daughter last saw her mother alive an hour ago, but that she was feeling a little unwell and took to bed. Then the daughter had checked on her half an hour later and found her not breathing. She then waited twenty minutes to call us as she was in such a "tizzy". A quick look told us that even if we had been there when it had happened it was unlikely we could do much - various clues led us to think that a stomach ulcer had ruptured and she had bled out into her stomach.

All around the house were flowers and cards - due to the next day being Mothering Sunday.

No sooner than we had informed the daughter that her mother had died than the doorbell went - my crewmate went down to see who it was. It was only a bleedin' flower delivery man, delivering flowers to the (now) dearly departed. My crewmate told the delivery guy that now, perhaps, wasn't the best time to bring flowers - but took them in anyway, hiding them in the kitchen.

Perfect.

Then we had to wait an hour for the police to turn up - which is normal procedure for any death in the home, and is nothing to worry about. I then helped the police turn her body (to look for anything strange) and put my hand in a puddle of urine* - something that wouldn't bother me, IF I was wearing any gloves.

Oh well.

*I lost my sense of smell ages ago - I can't smell urine, faeces or alcohol. I count myself lucky in this regard.

It's four o'clock in the morning and I can't be bothered to go to bed. Faithless - Insomnia is playing on MTV at the moment...

Does this look healthy to you?

For any weblog owners that are in the UK, there is a new forum for RL meets - at the moment it's based mainly in Manchester - I think some of the rest of us need sign up.

Find it here at www.blogmeet.co.uk.

Goodnight.

Well, the PEP is still going down, unfortunately I've developed a Palovian response to the hours of 8 o'clock. Every twelve hours I need to take the pills - I start to get nauseous just thinking about it, the familiar copper taste hits my mouth and I just want to lay down.
I also seem to have lost any control over my circadian rhythms, I'm sleeping for 14-16 hours straight and I'm drowsy for the rest, doesn't matter whether it is day or night.
At the moment the rather wonderful "Scissor Sisters" album is chilling me out nicely, particularly "Return to Oz" (which has a bit that puts me in mind of The Kinks "Lola"). You can hear some samples Here.

I am however losing the motivation for cooking food, not least because of the large amount of washing up accruing in my sink. Makes me feel like a student again.

Also my PC is screaming out for a complete overhaul - and I just can't be arsed.

As mentioned earlier - loads of friends are wondering just why I am not bothered about the chances of being found HIV+ in three months time. Well, part of it is that I know the maths. At the moment my chances of becoming HIV+ are estimated at greater than 1 in 5,000. At those odds, I'm just as likely to die by electrocution...

 Chances of dying from selected causes (USA) 








               Cause of death                                            Chances





Motor vehicle accident                                                   1 in 100


Homicide                                                                 1 in 300


Fire                                                                     1 in 800


Firearms accident                                                        1 in 2,500


Electrocution                                                            1 in 5,000


Asteroid/comet impact                                                    1 in 20,000


Passenger aircraft crash                                                 1 in 20,000


Flood                                                                    1 in 30,000


Tornado                                                                  1 in 60,000


Venomous bite or sting                                                   1 in 100,000


Fireworks accident                                                       1 in 1 million


Food poisoning by botulism                                               1 in 3 million


Drinking water with EPA limit of tricholoethylene                        1 in 10 million





(From C.R. Chapman & D. Morrison, 1994, Nature 367, 33-40.)

That and, the way my crewmate and I drive our ambulance I'm way more likely to be killed doing that...

The other thing is that there is nothing I can do now to affect the outcome of things - it's in the lap of the Gods.

Side effects are subsiding with Metoclopramide, now I just have a mild nausea and a general feeling of "mildly befuddled".