Sorry that the updates for this blog are getting further and further apart. This is the curse of not having the internet at home and although I have been issued with a laptop at work I am still not sure what sites I can an cannot access via it. Also I don’t think updating my blog with all it’s secrets about me at work would be a very good idea.
On the whole I am loving my job. It is nice to have something to do. At first it was hard and I felt as if I was being ganged up on a bit by the rest of the technicians but I seem now to have proved myself and proved that I can do this job. I do seem to keep having all the extra crap (laminating, colour printing, rearranging computer resources etc) dumped on me which I am sure is outside the remit of a school science lab technician but I keep doing it to please everyone else, even if this does measn that I’m still cutting, glueing and printing well into the early hours of the morning.
I am enjoying it so much that I have applied to complete a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) for Secondary level general science starting in September at the Institute of Education and Goldsmiths College, both in London. I’m not sure if I really want to live back at home but Newcastle doesn’t have any vacancies anymore as I have left it really late to apply, and it is only a year course so I’m sure that I’ll manage.
I’m not sure if I should be making any plans for September yet. I got my plaster cast off on Tuesday which is lovely because as the weather now turns warmer I am not stuck with a fibreglass heat enduring thing round my leg. However, now that the cast is off and the foot appears to be healing, even if the orthopaedic surgeon did have a bit of a go at me over the fact that the scar wasn’t as neat as he thought it should be (not my fault – for once I couldn’t pick and stratch and interfere with it as it was in a cast) we have to turn to the more pressing nature of the fact that the tumour is still in my tibia. They took another x-ray on Tuesday and compared it with the pre-op and post-op x-rays and with the MRI scan I had back in February. The tumour has grown, quite significantly and they are now concerned about it.
A few months ago they told me that they were 90% certain that it was benign, although as the boyfriend said, that always left a 1 in 10 chance. They did a biopsy which showed an abnormality so they did another one which proved inconclusive, because of this they decided to watch and wait and treat the injury first. Now it has grown quite significantly they are worried that it is quite aggressive.
They even mentioned the C word and were talking about possible treatment options. These range from amputation, through to removed the tumour and completing a bone graft or inserting a metal rod to support the bone (the tumour is now occupying about 35% of the bone space in my tibia), through to drug treatment if it does turn out to be malignant, through to watching and waiting. I’m not good at coping with the unknown and this is one of the biggest unknowns I have ever had to face.
I have an appointment with the North of England Bone and Soft Tissue Tumour Service people on Wednesday. There I will see a nurse specialist and another orthopaedic surgeon to see what is the best way to progress. I will have some more tests, including a bone scan and be booked in for another biopsy, possibly an open biopsy, and undergo another MRI scan. As the boyfriend said earlier in the week, it never rains but it pours!
Otherwise things are OK. I have been preoccupied and nearly on the verge of tears with the above and on Wednesday morning I nearly didn’t go into work, but I did eventually, but then went to A&E straight afterwards after cutting myself. The doctor who treated me tried to be kind and sympathetic but acknowledged it was a stressful and worrying time for me and if I needed to cut then I should get angry with myself for doing it. She gave me the basic talk on harm minimisation and then steri-stripped me up, stuck some dermabond on top and let me go. She did ask if I wanted to see the Deliberate Self Harm Team but I said there wasn’t any point and she agreed saying that they probably wouldn’t see me as there is a clear stressor for the event. I also saw C (my psychiatrist) on Friday who said she was glad that I was panicking because if I was calm then she would have been worried and that it is a great improvement on a few months ago that I actually care about my life and my future.
It’s been glorious weather and I actually braved Newcastle city centre in a t-shirt and knee length skirt yesterday. I got some odd looks and some stares but I don’t care anymore. I also went for a mooch round Leazes Park where I bumped into one of my named nurses from when I was on the section and her little girl who were feeding ducks. I also got told that I was ‘well cool’ by a group of wannabe emos who were sitting and smoking. One of them made me sad as she stared at my scars and told me that she was ‘well impressed with them’, as I looked at her she had faint lines all over her arms. I really wish self-harm wasn’t seen as the cool thing to do, it makes me angry and sad and scared that people are doing it to fit in. Of course it is a topic that makes me agry and sad and scared anyway, but the idea of teenagers damaging their body permanently just to fit into a social circle distresses me somewhat.
Ruth
Fighting The Urge 