Trying to mow the lawns yesterday I kept being interrupted by phone calls from nurses calling to say they were sick and unable to work the next day.<\/p>\n
By the time I worked out what the first woman was trying to tell me, with her feeble voice and occasional gentle cough, we\u2019d wasted quite a bit of time. She was trying to get hold of the recruitment agency. I told her she had the wrong number, but by the time the next person rang I knew more was required. I felt sorry for them, it\u2019s an almost unconscious thing to make yourself sound sick when you ring up to say you\u2019re ailing, the last thing you need is having to do the same performance in front of someone else. Eventually we managed to track down the source of the misinformation vis a vis<\/em> my role in the nursing resource management hierarchy (i.e. none), and I wasn\u2019t bothered again.<\/p>\n This morning I\u2019m back in my beloved neurosurgical theatre. Unfortunately it\u2019s a spine but on the plus side, the patient is supine. Yes, you can reach the cervical spine through the front of the neck, and it\u2019s much less problematic if you avoid all the exciting stuff in the midline.<\/p>\n We are under strict instructions not to let the surgeon know what\u2019s happening in the football World Cup final. Spain and Argentina are currently nil all. He wants to go home after finishing the operation and watch the game with no spoilers. I can\u2019t imagine he\u2019ll manage to avoid finding out the result somehow, but anyway we\u2019re doing our best to keep him in the dark while he\u2019s operating. I\u2019ve been telling everyone who\u2019s come in, such as the radiographers, not to spill the beans. Strangely enough, it seems like the majority have no idea what I\u2019m talking about. Weird! They probably don\u2019t know Ryan Fox won the golf this morning.<\/p>\n \u2026.<\/p>\n Well, in the end, it was his own PA who let the cat out of the bag. Yikes! Does she not know him at all? He finished the operation, checked his phone, and for some unknown reason she had told him the results in a text (\u201cI know you love football, wasn\u2019t the game amazing, Spain winning with the only goal of the match in the final minute! Incredible!\u201d) Luckily he wasn\u2019t angry, just disappointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Trying to mow the lawns yesterday I kept being interrupted by phone calls from nurses calling to say they were sick and unable to work the next day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-3pn","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/09\/everyone-loves-a-good-parking-story\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":0},"title":"Everyone loves a good parking story","author":"Interloper11","date":"August 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Long day in theatre today, lots of fun but I\u2019m tired. Also, normal transmission has resumed vis \u00e0 vis the weather over here i.e. it\u2019s cold and rainy. Hence, time to raid the back catalogue (don\u2019t look too hard for the logic there). \u00a0 Wilson parking Cc vice chancellor of\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2018\/08\/09\/everyone-loves-a-good-parking-story\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9699,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/18\/a-new-chapter\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":1},"title":"A new chapter","author":"Interloper11","date":"December 18, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"As it turns out, we were looking at new puppies even before Poppy got sick so very recently. With holidays coming up, meaning more free time at home, and my daughter getting a new puppy a couple of weeks ago, it just seemed right to go ahead with it even\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/IMG_6701-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12081,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/flow\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":2},"title":"Flow","author":"Interloper11","date":"September 2, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"There was a nurse\u2019s strike today, so theatres were running at a bare minimum - life and limb cases only, with all elective surgery cancelled. Rather than having the entire anaesthetic department twiddling their thumbs at the hospital, those of us not rostered to work (this time) got to spend\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_3272-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12515,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/02\/jog-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":3},"title":"Jog on","author":"Interloper11","date":"January 2, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"In a moment of weakness I agreed to go for a run with one of the offspring while everyone was staying with us over Christmas. I\u2019ve never seen the appeal of jogging. My parents used to do it back in the 80s. It seemed a strange thing to do to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_4655-539x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_4655-539x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/IMG_4655-539x1024.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10356,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/21\/brazen\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":4},"title":"Brazen","author":"Interloper11","date":"July 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"The consensus on the family chat is that Catdog has finally reached peak psychopath. She is now at the level of torturing small animals. Yes, she had the body of an entire deceased sparrow in her bed. Now, I\u2019m making no assumptions about how our feathered friend reached its end.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_8461-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_8461-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/IMG_8461-768x1024.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6275,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/11\/horror-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":13105,"position":5},"title":"Horror","author":"Interloper11","date":"March 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"I was in the anaesthetic department today, sitting up at the reception desk, chatting to the secretary about the newsletter, when two people I didn\u2019t know walked in. They were from occupational health, and they were there to book an appointment to learn how to do mask fittings (it\u2019s a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}