Organ Donation and the Church

If you have been following the news in the UK (specifically, Wales) recently, you’ll know that they are currently considering a bill that will mean that everyone will be assumed to be an organ donor, unless they opt out.  I am in favour of this (and wish the English government would do the same).

I am a registered Organ Donor (and carry a Donor Card), registered with the Anthony Nolan Trust as a potential bone marrow donor and, now that the law has changed, I have been single (and all that entails) for a sufficiently long time and I now have enough weight, I intend to become a blood donor.  I strongly believe that those of us who are lucky enough to be healthy should be doing as much as possible to help those who are not (which in part explains how passionate I am about my volunteering).

Now, I’m not saying that everyone should be forced to donate blood, or bone marrow.  While I’d love it if you did, I know that this can cause (a small amount of) disruption to your life and could make you unwell for a while, and I don’t want people to go into that without being willing.  However, to be blunt, once you are dead, the location of the organs in your body are the least of your worries.  (http://xkcd.com/659/)  If you are unfortunate enough to die at a stage when your organs are useful to others, then using them to allow one or more people to live on seems perfectly logical.

I know that it is scary, considering your own mortality, and that of the people you know.  But this legislation isn’t going to change your chances of dying of something (no matter how many scare stories are bandied around about doctors killing some to save others).  And it will decrease the 1000 people a year (cite) who die while waiting for a transplant.

Many people are thought to be willing to be an organ donor, but just haven’t got around to registering, and I’d wager most of these never will.  This will help those people follow this through without any trouble, and those who are against it will still be able to say no.

This post was prompted by a news article I spotted earlier, about the church speaking out against an opt-out system. This made me grumpy… While I am not religious, I don’t have a real problem with religion. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, as long as they don’t harm others.

This will harm people. The church has no problem with organ donation (cite). Why are they arguing against something that will save lives?

If you want to find out about blood donation, go here.

More information about bone marrow donation is available from the Anthony Nolan Trust. They are particularly looking for young male donors.

Organ donor registration can be done here.

(All links for England and probably good for the UK in general. Google is your friend if you need the details for elsewhere.)

If you want to sign up, do, and I encourage it. If you don’t, don’t. If that means that you need to opt-out, do so. At least you will have thought about it.

It’s your choice, and always will be. I may not like your decision, but I’ll still fight to ensure you can make it.

Another Door Closes

Yesterday I emailed by project supervisor, who had been pestering me about doing a PhD.  I basically explained that I don’t currently want to do a PhD, and that I have been looking for and found a graduate job.

This was not an easy email to send.  Despite being pretty certain that I want to take up this job offer, a part of me won’t let up on pointing out that I am turning down an opportunity that may not come up again.

Looking at it, I see this:

• Doing a PhD allows me to pursue something I’m probably interested in, to a level further than anything else I can do on my own.
• Doing a PhD will mean I can call myself Dr, which is kind of cool (even if it’s Doctor of Philosophy)
• I will essentially be being paid to do a PhD, and so start working off some of the mountain of debt I seem to have acquired

However:

• I can earn twice as much doing a real job as I can doing a PhD
• I still don’t know if I want to stay in engineering, and if I don’t, this is another few years down the pan
• I can do a PhD later if I wish, so if I stay with engineering the opportunity probably isn’t gone forever
• Other than being slightly more prestigious, I don’t see any benefits that a PhD can give me that experience doing the job won’t

I’m not saying it would be easy to take up a PhD later, and I’m not saying that it would be a complete waste of time.  I’m sure that, if I actually went for it, it would probably be fun.  But that wouldn’t answer the question of whether or not I want to do the job. The only way I’m going to work this out is by giving the whole job thing a go.

I decided a long time ago that I wouldn’t settle for a job I didn’t enjoy, just because it paid well.  I know full well that I can earn more as an engineer than as a nurse or a paramedic.  Perhaps if I was willing to go the whole hog and become a doctor of medicine it would be different, but I don’t, so that’s that.  I also know that as an engineer I’ll get nicer hours (or rather, not shift work), probably have a more comfortable life outside of work, and potentially be very successful.  However, none of this means very much if I don’t enjoy my work.  I’m sure I can live a comfortable and happy personal life on a nurse’s wage, and if I enjoy work more as well I think I’ll be better off.

And because of this, I won’t change my plans.  I will give engineering its chance.  I’ve invested too much into it now to not, and all this disenchantment may just be from uni course burnout.  However, if a couple of years down the line I decide that enough is enough, I will move on and do something else. And, in the mean time, I will work to put myself in the best possible position at that time.

I just have to keep reminding myself that while I might be passing up opportunities now, it’s all so that I can keep my options wider in the future.

An Update

So, I think I should do a bit of an update.

I’m currently in the middle of my final ever exams at Uni. I’ve done one, and have another three to go. I’m a bit stressed, as you can imagine.

It goes without saying that all the depression and anxiety are acting up, with all the problems that entails, not least because I still haven’t got around to doing anything about it…

On the bright side, I have just received confirmation that I have a graduate job with a big engineering company, doing pretty much the engineering I think I want to do. How it pans out remains to be seen, but at least its something to go in to while I worry about everything else. My plan has always been to get a graduate job, and then see what happens next. I can still go into nursing (or something else) later if things don’t work out, and in the meantime I can build up my savings, ready to go back to uni if the need arises.

Typically, now I’ve got this all sorted, I’ve got my project supervisor pestering me about doing a PhD with the uni. I’ll admit, the idea is slightly attractive, but not enough to make me abandon my longterm plans. I can’t justify further expense that could be on a doctorate in something I’m not that interested in as a career ( and I have no desire to be an academic…)

With the Organisation, it feels like we’re on the verge of mutiny with the local Adults. One member (who I have already introduced as CycleGuy) has jumped ship to join my youth unit, and the feeling is growing that two more may be planning to leave.  To add to this, I have heard through the grapevine that the Adult leader may want a word with me about ‘stealing’ CycleGuy, after having both of us make it clear to him that the unit he held his membership at was his choice, and neither of I nor the Adult leader minded what he chose.  The fact that CycleGuy and I both found this out through a third member doesn’t help the matter.  Needless to say CycleGuy is slightly miffed (and I’m far from impressed).

I also know that CycleGuy (as well as HistStudent) wants to become my 2IC.  I am a little sceptical, mainly because I worry that he doesn’t have the Youth Work experience, but my alternative is HistStudent who I know (at a gut level that is difficult to explain in words) would be wrong for the position.  I have been putting off re-opening the position (long story…) because I can’t really face the interviews and the stress they’ll cause, but I don’t think it can wait any longer.  I could be off for good in a few months time (sad times ), and someone needs to know what to do if I go.

I think that’s a catch-up of everything that’s been going on over here.  I have an exam tomorrow, so I can’t stay up too much later.  Fortunately I’m reasonably confident about this one (at least, everything is making sense).

Ambulance Frustration

You’ve broken your arm, and you have my sympathy.  You were in quite a bit of pain, but the paramedic gave you a lot of nice drugs and you’re not feeling too shabby now.  You now need a trip to the local children’s hospital, not a short journey.

Because the paramedic has given you some drugs, the paramedic needs to come along.  Fair enough, one of the side effects of morphine is respiratory arrest, and so we need to have something like naloxone available just in case.  This isn’t a drug I can give, so the paramedic is needed.  Not a problem, we can take two in the back along with a patient.

Except, because you’re under 16, your mother also really needs to come along.  Again, this wouldn’t be a particular issue, if it was just you, and about a year ago it wouldn’t have been an issue even with the paramedic along (at least, not officially).

Unfortunately, someone cocked up the weighing of the vehicle, and we’re not really sure if the weight limit can take three people plus a patient in the back.  Counting a crew of two (driver and attendant), a patient, a parent and a paramedic, we’re over our limit, and only one person on the crew is expendable: the attendant.  Me.

Off my truck goes, and I’m left stood in the primary treatment centre, and I’m in a bit of a fix.  I can’t commit myself to a patient in the treatment centre, because I don’t know when my truck will be back and I’ll need to be available for that straight away.  I can’t transfer to another vehicle, this will leave someone else without a ride.  This leaves me unable to treat, unable to transport, and unable to really do anything.

My crew-mate eventually gets back, but it’s someone else’s turn to get a patient, and nothing else needs transporting.  We get a 999 call, which I could respond to, but it gets given to another crew (who’ve already dealt with and transported a patient) and they ignore us when my crew-mate and I ask them to swap.

Now I know this was just bad luck.  There wasn’t anything done that was unreasonable (though that last crew did annoy me), but that didn’t leave me any less frustrated.  I hadn’t seen a patient all weekend, and still haven’t seen any patient on an ambulance that has needed me to use my advanced skills, and given my continuing track record it’s going to be a long time before I do.  Combined with not being able to do NHS shifts any more, this leaves me wondering whether qualifying was actually worth the stress.

Of cause, this was then compounded by everyone else asking if I enjoyed my transport, and then overly lamenting when I tell them that I didn’t actually get to go on it.  Oh, and a Control officer going ‘had we known (which they did), we could have sorted something for you’, which irritated me, a lot.  Not to mention my friend going on and on and on about the people he’d treated that day, and not getting the hint that I had had a shit day and didn’t want to talk about it.

Still, I’ll probably be crewing during major duty season next year, so I might get something.

Or I might just get sat somewhere, bored out of my skull with an irritating crew mate.  Listening to everyone else being kept busy, and wishing I was out on a bike, getting to do something…

Hitting the Speed Bumps

Image via Wikipedia

As an organisation (or, at least, in my part of the organisation), we are very keen at helping out the local ambulance service. By this I mean we will send out crews on ambulances (and occasionally on bikes) to help the service respond to 999 calls. Understandably, this could only be done by experienced members, and one of the criteria for the ambulance work was a certain number of hours third crewing on those shifts. This means working with two experienced members to build up some experience dealing with patients potentially more serious than anything I’ve ever dealt with before, which I’m strongly in favour of.  I don’t think I’d be happy going out on a shift without doing this first.

Unfortunately, since I qualified, it is no longer possible to third crew on any of our vehicles. Something to do with weight limits on the vehicles (which, given many of them are  transit vans modified into ambulances, not necessarily their original design role). This is very frustrating for me, as it means I can’t gain the experience needed to do NHS support.

To make matters worse, there are very few of us in this position (probably about 3 or 4), and so nobody at county level cares enough to do something about it. As far as they’re concerned, there are enough people to cover the shifts, and so there isn’t a problem.  This leaves me, and those few others, in a catch-22 situation: without having the needed experience, we aren’t able to gain the experience.

Needless to say, this is very frustrating.

A little while back, there was a possible solution. Our CRU lead sent us an email looking for interest in doing NHS cover on the bikes over Christmas. The roads get very busy in BigCity when everyone is doing their Christmas shopping, and the bikes can get around a lot easier than road ambulances. A load of us (apparently) applied, and it looked like it would go ahead. I even delayed heading home for Christmas around this.  A couple of us entertained the thought that this might count towards us getting some experience towards the ambulance work.

Of cause, it never happened. And we only found that out for certain a couple of days before the period was due to end. The reasons given was lack of  interest (yeah right), other duty commitments (*looks at depressingly empty duties book*) and lack of funding (*sigh*). Some of the more cynical amongst us suspect our useless County CRU lead is also to blame, but ho-hum.

All I’ve got to hope, in the nicest possible way to my patients, is that I get something interesting to do on the normal shift. Which, given my track record on a vehicle (nine or ten shifts, one patient transported for a minor injury) seems rather unlikely.  The only time I might have had an interesting job, someone kicked me off my truck (story to follow).

I think, as far as possible, I’ll try to stick with the bikes. At least on them I get something to do (and some useful exercise), giving me some experience treating, even if it’s not transporting someone…

My friend and I are already planning what out of county events we want to do.  Hopefully we’ll have a good yeah helping out our colleagues in the big city. At least there they know how well a bike unit can work…

Related articles

• Ambulance Excitement (walkingplasterdispenser.wordpress.com)

Why I Volunteer

One of the most common questions I am asked (along with ‘Are you paid for this?’ and ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever dealt with?’) is ‘How do you do this for free?’ This usually happens about the time when I’m trying to stop a drunk student from drowning in their own vomit, while avoiding getting vomited on myself, and their friend is on the other side trying not to vomit. My stock answer is ‘Because it’s fun!’

Even more often, when I’m knee-deep in the worst of the politics and fighting against the people who are too quick to tell us what we are incapable of doing and the people who don’t care and the people who don’t want to lose their power, I wonder why I do it. I spend hundreds of hours a year doing work for a cause I passionately believe in, and in return I get people try to work against me because I want to improve things and they don’t want to leave the happy little rut that they’ve dug themselves.

A short time ago, I dealt with a patient at a Half Marathon, while working on a bicycle. They weren’t particularly unwell, but they had fainted and were a bit shaken up. They hadn’t run anywhere near that distance before, and weren’t used to all the sensations of their body saying ‘that wasn’t such a good idea, let’s not do that again’. All put together, they got a bit worried, and worked themselves up in to what I’m pretty sure was a full-blown panic attack. And I don’t just mean a bit of hyperventilation that quickly cleared up. They were genuinely terrified, kept fainting from the unbalancing hyperventilation does to your body, which just kept making things worse.

In the end, I called an ambulance for them and got them shipped off to the main treatment center, where someone would have the time to care for them and help them calm down properly. As soon as they were sent off, I was sent to another collapse, and I put the entire incident out of my mind.

After the spending the rest of the day zipping up and down the course, I was stood down and headed to the main First Aid post to grab some personal kit and help pack everything up.

While I was there, I bumped in to my patient from earlier. They had just been discharged and were going home with their mother. They both stopped when they spotted me, and my patient asked if I had been the person with them out on the course.

“Yes, I think so. How are you now?” I replied.

“Much better now, thank you.”

“Do you know what was wrong?” The mother chimed in.

“I can’t say for absolute certain, but I think you had a panic attack.” I went to explain how a panic attack was a scary condition, but usually self-limiting and nothing to be overly concerned about. My patient nodded along with my explanation, and then commented that she couldn’t really remember what happened.

“I just remember being convinced that I was going to die, but I remember you being there, and talking to me, and holding my hand, and I knew that I would be okay.” I didn’t really know how to reply to that.

To me, the treatment didn’t seem that much. A simple, non-life-threatening condition that, even if I did nothing, would most likely pass on its own, which I passed on to someone as soon as it looked like it would take a long time to deal with. Fifteen-ish minutes on scene, before moving on to the next job, patient already out of my mind.

But in those fifteen minutes, I helped out a terrified person, taking away some of their fear just by being there. And to that person, I made all the difference.

This is why I volunteer.

Disappointment

As well as my (extremely time-consuming) activities with the Organisation, I am also a member of the theatre and event technical society on campus.  I don’t do much for them, I don’t really have the time, but when I can I go down and help out. Recently I signed up to help out with the panto on campus, asking if I could run the lighting desk.  I’ll admit that it’s been a long time since I did anything properly like this, but I do mostly know my way around a desk and with a little time I’m certain I could get back to it, and perhaps it would get me back in to doing this sort of thing on even an occasional basis.

I discovered today that I haven’t got the position. I won’t pretend that I’m not disappointed.  This would be the first event in a long time where I’ve been able to make the time to help out, so I was really hoping to get the opportunity.  I was also a little irritated to discover that the job has been given to someone who already has another (admittedly related) role in the show, when the position was offered up as a separate role. I won’t deny, he’s a lot better at that sort of thing than I am, and a lot more experienced in general, but that doesn’t really help stop it sting.  Perhaps I’d be less annoyed if a new member was doing the role (after all, them gaining experience is more valuable to the society), but somehow I doubt it.

I could still do the event in some other role, but I have to weigh the benefits against having to take a night or two off of Cadets, and given that we’re short-staffed as it is, I think I’d struggle to justify it to myself.

This is always the way these things tend to work with me.  I’m just a little sad, as I probably won’t be able to do any more of the theatre events after this.  They all tend to fall on a Tuesday, a Wednesday and/or a Thursday, all evenings when I’m busy.

Sometimes I regret joining the Organisation, or how involved I’ve got in it, for all the stress that it’s caused and all the opportunities I’ve missed because of it.  The fact that I can’t go be part of the University Band, or attend the sort of events I’m interested in with the society, or the other half-dozen things that all fall on a Thursday night.

Of cause, then I remember that because of it I can crew ambulances, and get to cycle around on the cool bikes, and I suppose that does make up for it.  A little.  I just wish I could do everything…

Ambulance Excitement

Image via Wikipedia

Okay, I’m really rather excited again.

First things first, it looks like I’ve passed the last bit of my ambulance crew training.  This means I’m now fully qualified to crew an ambulance (eep!) and transport an emergency patient (ahh!).  I have a year’s probation to complete, but that only limits who I can crew with (which doesn’t change anything, because I can’t drive).  Given the number of sleepless nights the course caused me, as well as how long I spent training, this is really good news.  It might mean I can’t cycle as much as I’d like to (which is sad ) but it will definitely open up a few new opportunities of events I can get to.

Second, I have just heard when I am getting my first duty on an ambulance: at the end of the week…  I qualified on Sunday…  In the upcoming three-day event, I am on an ambulance for two days (during which I’m almost certain to get something…) and am in charge of people on the remaining one.  This is even more scary.  I have never had actual responsibility at a major event. Well nothing more than “Keep an ear on the radio, I’m just going to the loo.”  Being in charge of about one-third of the foot patrols present is not something I’d expected to do, not least because I’d expected to spend most of the days as a foot patrol myself, or in a treatment centre at best.

So yes, life is getting interesting in the Organisation at the moment.

Oh, and try not to get injured if you’re attending a three-day event this weekend.  It might just be me taking you to A&E.

…

Well, try not to get injured anyway…

Social Networking Plug

As my current post is taking ages to come together, I think this is time for a bit of shameless plugging of my social networking (lack-of-)presence.  So, in no particular order:

Facebook: The Walking Plaster Dispenser

Twitter: @wplstrdispenser

Feel free to drop in, follow, like, chat, whatever.

And now, back to our normal programming.  Well, when it sorts itself out…

Google+: Walking Plaster Dispenser

And Again With the Wrong Men

Sometimes I wonder if someone, somewhere, has it in for me.

Yet again, I have fallen for the wrong guy.  Yet again, I’ve found myself having feelings about a straight man (in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend), and have to clamp down hard on them.

This time it’s one of my friends from the Organisation.  We met about a year ago, I think, when he moved to the area, and I started regularly attending the local Adult unit.  He settled in to the unit fairly quickly, and as we have very similar interests in the Organisation, and opinions on how many things should be done, we’ve got on very well.

Over time, and particularly recently, I’ve noticed that I’ve become very attracted to him, above and beyond the normal wish to be around someone who you get along with.  He’s a bit older than the man I’d normally go for, and not conventionally good-looking, but there’s something about him that gets me going every time.  I think it’s because pretty much everything he does, he’s very passionate about, and it’s really easy to get caught up in that, and it’s exciting.

It doesn’t help that I have recently spent a large amount of time in his company, and a reasonable amount of that alone with him.  It’s possible (though looking increasingly unlikely) that we could be crewing a vehicle together this weekend.

I am, of cause, being good.  Not only would I not dream (well…) of getting involved with someone who is obviously dedicated to his partner (who I also get on with reasonably well), I know that doing anything about this except ignoring it would only end in losing our friendship.  Not to mention the general awkwardness that it would result in from now until the end of time.  Instead, I bite my tongue, and keep things as friendship only.

If only I could fall for someone who there is even a chance that they might return the feelings, without the certainty that it’ll blow up in my face.