#red cassiterite medic

[cat-attack1701]

TF2 Gem AU Support Classes!

Offense ~~ Defense ~~ Support

[immortal-dreamer-aes]

I have an obsession with gemstones and military men lets do this

Grif: orange calcite, tries eating plants, plays dead when lunarians arrive, has pieces of almadine to replace lost pieces

Simmons: Almadine Garnet “almadine”, statistics of battles nerd, good at running, replacement arm made from silver alloy (gave up pieces for orange calcite)

Sarge: red jasper “jasp”, laughs during battles, can and will abandon partners to fight lunarians, most likely to be broken by choice, wants a bigger sword than anyone else

Donut: pink diamond, missing right eye but didn’t ask for a replacement, likes helping red beryl with fashion, violently caring to the flowers outside the school, throws their sword a lot

Lopez: Cassiterite, never fully learned how to speak, loses their head a lot, responsible for architecture and weapon repair, sick of everyone’s shit, understands admirabillis but no one believes them

Doc: Alexandrite (violet for doc, red for o’malley), never leaves the school, helps organize medical supplies, gets picked on a lot or just ignored, wants literally one day of rest

Church: Lazulite, breaks a lot, specifically knows what memories are stored where, already been broken a lot but reassembled, lost for a while before returning as a lunarian (ch. 95)

Tucker: Aquamarine, probably looks at some lunarian illustrations and thinks, “they’re hot,” spends too much time arranging their hair, has an adopted admirabillis (junior), has the accidental highest number of gem to lunarians casualty ratio

Caboose: Blue Diamond, talks to every plant and animal along patrol, brings them all home and takes care of them, like seriously their room is a lot of dirt and bugs with birds sitting at the window, scratches their finish a lot, wants a shiro in its full form

Tex: Bort Diamond, has purposely broken other gems if dared, one scratch=death to every living thing in a ten mile radius, only pieces left after most fell into the ocean

Sister: honey calcite, hates Aquamarine’s guts, regales a lot with orange calcite, stands by the chord shore a lot while bored, would also fuck a lunarian or moon gem (diopside)

—————————

Carolina: blue topaz, never leaves a fight with a scratch, judges based on hardness, volunteers for winter shifts, takes after bort but hates them being mentioned, stays with lunarian lazulite

Wash: Celestine, winter gem, formerly super awkward but became battle hardened after losing several partners, trains the younger houseki, everyone loves them

York: citrine, extra with their sword techniques, likes annoying Celestine, former partner of blue topaz, missing left eye (replaced with pearl)

North/South: amethyst twin crystals (slight pigment difference), both sneak out at night, north tries talking to animals and holding them, south tends to scare them away, eventually split apart and get taken to the moon separately

Maine: howlite, definitive proof that low hardness does not mean weakness, og Celestine partner, cassiterite level of mute, never hesitates to take an arrow or spear for others, sleepwalks during hibernation

CT: hawk’s eye, nighttime patrol, sits alone most of the time, secretly watches the winter shift, LOATHES the hardness hierarchy

Wyoming: albite, good at dodging, makes up jokes as a pastime during patrol, also very extra with sword tricks, never stays with a partner for long

Florida/Flowers: turquoise, handmade weapons, the only gem that laughs at albite’s jokes, usually quiet otherwise, briefly partnered with aquamarine before being taken

The triplets (ohio, iowa, and idaho): sodalite cluster, the only trio partnership, all three somehow managed to survive a trip into the ocean, play hypothetical games a lot in boredom, never saw a lunarian until it was too late

—————————

Kimball: euclase, command speaker, former partner of Zircon, cracks at the thought of them now, demanding, needs a damn nap, mom friend of the entire chorus group

Doyle: barite, current partner of Euclase, can barely lift the lightest blade, flinches at the slightest bit of movement in the field, euclase has definitely almost broken them in rage

Palomo: green fluorite, lost partners but barely notices, whines during tasks, stutter of the gods, surprisingly still on earth

Jensen: grossular, likes helping with building and architecture but usually breaks something/someone by accident, also hates going outside

Andersmith: Haüyne, everything is symbolic, pats heads for comfort, parent friend, cracked by zircon once

Bitters: Marcasite, sleeps on patrol, doesn’t move when butterflies land on them, has tried eating plants and failed

Matthews: Pyrite, youngest houseki, listens to every command without question, repeatedly broken during battle but always comes back in one piece, covers for Marcasite’s naps

Grey: sugilite, main doctor, scares Alexandrite, psychoanalysis for life, delays fixing to look into individual pieces, desperately wants to dissect lunarians but chooses not

Locus: Diopside, moon gem, refuses to give up pieces of celestine, prefers larger blade but anything works, scares lunarians to a haunting degree

Felix: zircon, moon gem, knives, purposely tries keeping other gems in pristine condition to break them later, lives for annoying diopside

Sharkface: pyrope, moon gem, has tried breaking zircon multiple times, hangs around admirabillis on the moon, wants to see the ocean one day

—————————

Dylan: lunarian, writes about the gems in-depth, tries her best to save any pieces not crushed to dust yet, sneaks between moon and earth

Jax: admirabillis, everyone really wishes he couldn’t speak but he does, tries eating moon dust to Dylan’s dismay, also sneaks between the moon and earth on sunspots

Temple: chrysocolla, lives alone in the ocean trying to find the pieces of orange fluorite (Biff), washes ashore after a while and harasses lunarian Lazulite, breaks another gem to try and negotiate OF being returned

Genkins: lunarian noble, wears as much jewelry as possible, like symbolic pieces (lazulite, bort, etc.), will swing a weapon at any lunarian or gem without warning

Chrovos: lunarian noble, admirabillis breeder, crushes/sculpts gem pieces, adores Pink diamond (makes them a little eyepatch)

—————————

One: azurite, lives for sparring/training, makes jokes about the older gems, hotheaded, easily runs into battle even against orders, likes being partnered with Spinel

East: spinel, fastest of the squad, also hates the hardness scale, first year almost lost to the ice floes, missing torso pieces, coddled by heliodor (in their own way), hates being partnered with Azurite

Raymond: sphene, most likely to cuddle a shiro until it reforms, forgets the hardness of others half the time, that comes at the consequence of crashing into harder gems and breaking, very jumpy but coordinated

Axel: pyrope, former partner of red diamond, original arms missing replaced with gold/platinum alloy (ice floes trying to save spinel), pun-king, also likes tending to plants

West: heliodor, leader of shatter squad™️, protective of spinel (saw them born from the chord shore), strict to the hardness scale, dad friend, has seen a lot of gems lost

Tiny: yellow topaz, lives for architecture and weapons maintenance, also furniture builder, has cracked a few gems with hugs, the best card player

Diesel: dumortierite, moon gem, lotta different pieces, agate legs, different varieties across body (synthetic and captured), barely remembers their name half the time because of it, has a huge soft spot for red diamond and spinel

Phase: spinel (twin crystal), synthetic in torso holes, good at delivering precise damage, never sticks with one hairstyle or outfit, refuses to be seen on earth, takes everything to hold back smashing Azurite

Zero: red diamond, former partner of Pyrope, it’s big sword or no sword, wants to be the last houseki standing on the moon and earth, former winter shift, sleepwalks

[jghouse-asia-pacific]

New Post has been published on https://www.jg-house.com/2021/07/28/big-city-small-world/

Big City, Small World

On the third floor, Sylvere found himself in a wide, unexpected space similar to the one on the second floor. The difference was the collection of small circular tables surrounded by chairs and other office equipment which he now saw. Perhaps 15 people huddled together in small groups, typing on computers.

A young man stepped out of a small room, apparently a lavatory, on the eastern side of the room and told Sylvere where to find Bénédicte. When Sylvere approached the northwestern corner of the building, he saw a large circular table under a tall window. At the table sat a child-like figure hunched over a stack of files.

Inexplicably, Sylvere recognized the woman who, noticing the appearance of someone she expected to be a stranger, put down the piece of paper she held and rose from the table. As she walked toward him, extending one hand, Sylvere recalled a scene almost 40 years previously in a medical clinic atop a muddy hill on the outskirts of Beni, a city of 250,000 people in the northeastern corner of Congo 75 kilometers from Uganda.

On an overcast day in 1982 outside Beni, Sylvere had traveled with his friend, Ronald, to the medical clinic’s primitive facilities where they encountered a diminutive woman wearing the habit of a Dominican nun. She stood next to a group of Mbuti people, commonly known as pygmies. She was no taller than any of the four Mbuti men accompanying three Mbuti women and one of their children who came from the nearby Ituri rainforest so the child could receive treatment for an acute case of dysentery.

Standing in the offices of Le Carrefour and shaking the tiny hand of the woman, who no longer wore a habit but who now wore an austere black dress, Sylvere recalled that Ronald, a young medical doctor returning from Europe to Congo with plans of opening his own clinic, eventually had chosen the city of Rutshuru, 300 kilometers south of Beni, as the site of his new practice. But both Sylvere and Ronald had been impressed by the nun, who although diminutive in stature was commanding in presence.

“Ronald was a good man,” Bénédicte commented, seemingly reading Sylvere’s thoughts. “True, he didn’t fully grasp the severity of his situation caught between a desire to help innocent men, women, and children and a need to co-operate with scrupulous business and political operators seeking power and wealth.” Bénédicte directed her gaze upward into Sylvere’s face with an intensity and coldness which plunged his thoughts into a state of confusion. The gaze had a profound impact on Sylvere, simultaneously surprising and repulsing him.

Meeting her gaze, Sylvere calculated the small woman before him was at least 85 years old. He wondered what sustained her over so many years in her work. He didn’t think her efforts were born of empathy or even love for fellow human beings.

“Of course, Ronald also was a good doctor,” Bénédicte continued, leading Sylvere back to the table. Through the tall window, Sylvere saw a view of the streets in that ancient quarter of Paris he had not seen before. He wondered if the building was owned by the Catholic Church or else one of its wealthy and loyal adherents.

Bénédicte gestured toward one of the chairs at the table, directing the intensity of her gaze at Sylvere again.

“But the Lord had other plans for Ronald in Heaven,” the small woman added. “Who are we to question the designs of our Heavenly father?”

Old Woman on the Street

***

The dark clouds massing in the skies some distance north of Paris during the late morning now extended southward to the skies above the city. Still Sylvere thought he could make it back to Combs-la-Ville before the rain started falling.

Standing on the sidewalk next to the street, Rue Montmartre, on one side and on the other side the set of two tall wooden doors at the base of the building which housed the offices of Le Carrefour, he looked at the watch on his right wrist. It was almost 2:15. He wanted to return home as quickly as possible. He hoped to stop at Pinto’s house, which was just four blocks away from his own house, to report on the meeting with Bénédicte. However, Sylvere didn’t hurry down the street in the direction of the train station, Châtelet–Les Halles. Instead he looked up at the sky again, recalling the words spoken to him by Bénédicte half an hour earlier.

“We will do everything we can to help Claudette,” Bénédicte had stated. “The process likely will be a long one,” she had added before looking across the table at her assistant. “Edwina will contact you on Monday for the rest of the information we need to open an asylum case,” Bénédicte had continued. Although Bénédicte had expressed her sympathies, she had explained that her organization did not have the ability to arrange immediate admission to France for Claudette despite the threats on her life in Congo.

The meeting had dashed his hopes. He had failed.

“It’s clear now,” Sylvere said out loud in Kikongo. “I will not be able to rescue Claudette from Congo and bring her to France in time.” Abruptly, Sylvere, a different thought entering his mind, removed his mobile phone from the pocket of his red windbreaker. He made a call. “Tell Jim not to accept the job offer from the company in Switzerland until I’ve had an opportunity to talk with him,” Sylvere said in Lingala when Josephine had answered. “I’ll be home by 4:30,” he added. He hung up. This time, still grasping his phone in one hand, he pushed his body as fast it would go through the streets leading to Châtelet–Les Halles.

When Sylvere arrived at the massive transit hub in the heart of Paris and made his way to the platform designated for the train to Combs-la-Ville, he stopped 20 feet away from a rectangular concrete structure to which a long plastic bench had been attached to each of the four sides of the structure. He could see as many as 30 people sitting on the benches or standing in front of them. As Sylvere brought his small phone up to his face and started to reply to the text message he had received from Pinto during lunch, his attention was caught by someone standing directly up the platform from him. Sylvere looked at the person.

Serge was looking back at him. Sylvere opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again. No, it was not Serge who was looking at him. The man, who bore a resemblance to Serge, flashed a smile at Sylvere before averting his gaze to a point somewhere down the tracks. Startled by the resemblance and reminded of the events from earlier in the day, Sylvere directed his attention back to his phone. He found the phone number he wanted. He dialed the number.

“Can you think of any reason Serge would be following me?” Sylvere said in Kikongo when Pinto had answered. Both men belonged to the Kongo ethnic group which originated in southwestern Congo. They had the same mother tongue. Also like Sylvere, Pinto had socialized with Serge at many events, both large and small, in the Congolese community over the years.

“Can you think of any reason Serge would be talking with Quentin?” Pinto replied, referring to the bodyguard of Anthony Lukambo, whose coltan and cassiterite mines in eastern Congo had made him a rich and powerful man at the expense of the lives of many other people. Pinto described how his wife, Bernadette, had overheard Serge and Quentin talking in an alley behind a Congolese market in Combs-la-Ville the previous day. “Meet me at my house tonight after dinner,” Pinto added. “I’ll be in my workshop in the back.”

Young Woman on the Street

***

The first drops of rain began hitting the pavement as Sylvere hurried along Rue Gustave Hervé in the old section, built in the 1970s, of Combs-la-Ville and came in sight of his house. He could feel the raindrops soaking through the thin sleeves of his red windbreaker and spreading across his skin. Then he could feel a different sensation through the worn fabric of his jacket. It was the vibration of his phone.

“Sylvere stopped on the side of the road next to a tall mulberry tree, removed his phone from the pocket of the red windbreaker, and looked at the caller ID information. He saw a number which included three characters, +49, indicating the country code of Germany. He didn’t recognize the number. But he answered.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Sylvere,” a woman said, speaking slowly in French, “we are prepared to help you transport Ms. Claudette from Goma, Congo, to Paris, France.” Sylvere realized he had heard the woman’s voice before. It belonged to the fifth contact and sole woman referred by Pinto. The woman continued: “We would like to invite you and Mr. Pinto to Tervuren, outside Brussels, to discuss our proposition. We understand the urgency of the situation. We will send a car for you tomorrow at noon. Please stand by for further details.”

The connection was cut.

Sylvere didn’t move, standing on the side of the road in the rain next to a mulberry tree while holding his phone to his ear. A car passed. A second car passed. A third car approached, its horn honking. Sylvere felt small streams of water running down his back, his legs, his whole body. He brought the phone down from his ear and started composing a text message.

“You came through,” Sylvere wrote in Kikongo. “We’re going to Brussels tomorrow.” He sent the message. Then he walked home.

***

#Europe, #France, #LifeCulture #Africa, #Art, #Beauty, #Culture, #Paris

[thesteveyates]

A curious cabinet post.

Once a month now i intend to post an update on the ‘cabinet of curiosities’ which is both a visual set of artefacts/prompts for my writing and a kind of pun filled memory box.  Right now , as i finish and edit the post, i have cleared my locker out at work, thrown my scrubs on the floor of the changing room…..someone else can clear up for a change…..and quietly walked out of the hospital, i hope for the last time.   I guess then that inevitably there will be parts of this post that relate back to the nearly 40 years that i spent as a nurse and all the changes that have happened : many of those not for the better.

And so..”.a long time ago in a distant galaxy”….

It was a tradition of one boat that i sailed a lot of ocean miles on, to run a ships newspaper.  It was written in as spoof shock-horror outrage style as whoever was editing it could muster up, sort of ‘The Sun/News of the World‘  meets your worst parochial local newspaper after a collision with ‘VIZ ‘ magazine from the same era.      ‘Man found in bilge‘  was an early headline if i remember it right.

It’s all so long ago that i can’t remember actual articles but suffice to say that the skipper and mate usually got some scurrilous leg-pull and anything that anyone did that was remarkably stupid usually warranted a leader.  Crossing the line once or twice i think gave us a couple of sessions of ‘court appearances’   and i do remember speeding fines being handed out at one time….it being rumoured that the boat’s insurance only went up to 15 knots…..i hit about 28 during a monster surf one time !.  I think that one cost me several tins of beer as that’s how we gave out fines for most misdemeanours.

There was a slightly serious side, i used to add medical content when it was necasary : the treatment for ‘gunnel-bum‘ being one of mine and i think once a close to the bone(R) reminder about Brazil, Willy’s, STD’s  and condom useage !.  I do remember writing those in a consciously ‘Sister Plume‘ style.  I guess that most if not everyone will now not have the slightest clue what or whom i am talking about : well, Sister Plume was a made up chraracter from the Nurses comic : ‘Nursing times’.  Sister Plume being an old-time old-fashioned ward sister who believed in ‘high, hot and a hell of a lot‘ enemas’s and a tidy linen cupboard……oh how times have changed !.  Just before i scheduled the post for publishing, my mother messaged me to ask if the curio cabinet would contain some of those tacky little ‘a gift from’ pieces of tat that appear in ‘gift’ shops around the coast….well not unless they are in extremely bad taste….perhaps a dildo in the shape of the Blackpool tower or similar !.   There is a genuine vintage enema kit on display so….

Anyway, enough smutty talk and back to Sister Plume for a moment.

One ‘for real’ version of the excellent Sister Plume whom i actually knew got so cross at the phone ringing during morning report time that she whipped her nursing scissors out of her belt and snipped through the handset cable !

Sister Plume….possibly.

Lost at sea  ?, well you should be by now.

You see, i’m working on displays for the ‘curious cabinet’ , i really need to something based on my own nursing career but have a bit of fun with the whole thing at the same time.  At first i just thought about hanging my statement of entry (nursing register) but it’s a poor thing and i don’t even have an old SRN badge as they were scrapped just before i qualified and i was unfeasibly pissed about that.  I had a training badge and hospital badge somewhere but have no idea where either are now.  I did think about photographs of course and i might be able to track down a picture of the old infirmary where i did a placement…..the hospital where i did most of it is as brutal and soul-less a public building as you can imagine.  Where i work now (used to work until yesterday) is immeasurably worse…..like one of the scenes from Huxley’s  ‘brave new world’.

I’ll probably have my own custom stethoscope in there and i’d like to find a really old, bell style one and maybe some of the other, older stuff that was still kicking around when i started my career.  What i am working on for this first part is a display of glass….medical glass, specifically medicines, poisons and pharmacy glass as most of it is really attractive. There needs to be lots of visual puns as well : an Arsenic bottle will be there because Arsenic is an important local product.  Just across the hill from here are the remnants of arsenic tunnels in the old mine workings : the principle being that the arsenic and tin  bearing mineral (cassiterite) was burnt in a chamber that led into a tunnel….the arsenic tunnel.  The arsenic would condense out on the granite walls and it was someone’s job to crawl through there and scrape the arsenic salt off the wall !.

Nice work if you can get it !…..one small visual artefact i have here is an all-steel miners compass and clinometer for the underground surveying of tunnels and so forth.  In the garden we have a few larger bits and pieces of old mining hardware that i unearthed while i was working on the gardens here.

Tin mining and it’s highly toxic by-product arsenic were a big deal in the area of east Cornwall where i now live.  To buy a property here it’s essential to do a mining search and even then the mines records only go back so far , not every tunnel, adit and gallery were mapped .  There is one place in a nearby village where the garden of one council house just disappeared into a big hole one day, the house had to be taken down and the hole plugged.  A regular occurrence in that village is that a company is still tasked with taking soundings of underground water levels via long bore-hole pipes under manhole covers.  Apparently the water level is slowly dropping although there is said to be an entire underground lake under the village.

Did you know that one of the most polluted rivers in the world is a few miles down the road in Cornwall ?…..no i guess not, well that’s the Red river down in west Cornwall and the river bed bears no life whatsoever…..loaded with arsenic. An arsenic compound (arsphenamine) by the way was once a treatment for syphillis and once also a tonic, dispensed, carefully i hope by pharmacists. Dredging my memory a bit i think that Napoleon Bonaparte’s body showed signs of medical arsenical poisoning most-mortem.

Last week i found a completely engaging bloke in the local indoor market when i had to pass through the tin mining town of Tavistock which was once central to the tin and arsenic industry locally.  He had maybe a hundred mixed glass bottles on display going back into the 18th century and everything from pharmacist’s ‘flats’ to genuine medicines and poisons bottles.  We had a quick flick through his picture files on his phone and i was able to recognise and name some of the labels….an early form of digoxin (digitalis) was one that i must find as it’s closely linked to my own career in cardiothoracics, another one was ‘oil ficus which has to be oil of figs….a laxative.  ‘The one that caught my eye at first was, of course, way outside my budget but i have the beginnings of a nice medical/chemical display….the second display link being that my first job after leaving school was as a very junior laboratory assistant.

The ‘pharmacia’ as i am thinking of it, needs some other visual puns so i’m on the lookout for some ‘dried frog pills’ and a  ‘red pill’ or two although maybe the display should only have the blue one just to show that the red one has already been taken.  One of the poisons display bottles will be cleaned out and filled with the remnants from a bottle of Mount Gay rum that came out of the bottom of my sailing bag….it must be 20 years old at least and is still potent : that ones going in either ‘poison’ or ‘not to be taken’.

I already have a title in mind for this one below….. i really do wonder what they are just about to shoot-up on.  Very few will know that Heroin addiction was very common among medical professionals at one time….one consultant that i used to sail with claimed that he spent long weekends on call , totally wired with amphetamines.  To be honest this one below is almost certainly a staged photograph from a teaching exercise : the kit is nice though, glass syringes, enamel kidney dishes and swabs in a dish of spirits all neatly laid out as i was taught to do it.  I did make an Ebay bid on a ferocious looking glass syringe and an old enamel kidney dish but didn’t win either of them.

Party time at the nurses home !

So yes….my display is going to have some memorabilia from my own career but skewed back a few years in time.  I have found , but can’t afford, an early anaesthetic device designed for using ether as the volatile agent, several cased glass syringes which i can afford one of and so on.  Disturbingly i also managed to find a machine designed to deliver electro-convulsive therapy on Ebay…..ECT was still being performed at the psychiatric hospital where i did my student stint when i was there.

At it’s peak Whittingham psychiatric hospital or asylum as it was once known was the largest psychiatric hospital in the whole of Europe, possibly in the world.  There weren’t many patients or inmates left when i was there and the ones that were had been there for nearly their entire lives…..totally institutionalised.  Whittingham was so large that it had it’s own infirmary, church and burial ground, let alone a full bakery, butchery and huge kitchen where some of the inmates worked.

I did a quick search just to see what happened to the old psychiatric hospital at Whittingham where i spent 8 weeks of my training……and not as a patient i hasten to add.  A few years back when i took a brief look at ‘urbex-ing’ while i lived in Sheffield i found a whole load of photographs of Whittingham hospital after it was closed and abandonned…..several of those pictures i have added to the slide show of Preston Royal Infirmary below as they are linked by my own nurse training…..i think several of my friends worked on one of the old infirmary wards in those pictures.

Just for a bit of nostalgia here are some mixed images of the old Preston Royal Infirmary where i did one ward placement and some from Whittingham psychiatric hospital where i did another.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The medical display should also link to my longer voyages as well because i did the first ones of those as ‘medic’ in a Whitbread race and then a cruising circumnavigation. I used to have, can’t find it today, a crew hat from that Whitbread race on which i had kept a kind of record of the odd ailments and real injuries that i treated during that race.  From memory there were a couple of ‘I and D’s…(incision and drainage of abcess) a bit of suturing here and there, at least one case of hypothermia,and one badly shattered ankle which is the worst actual injury that i have ever had to deal without assistance and advice.

Many of the actual injuries and illnesses that i dealt with have found their way into the blog at some time or other, principally in the first aid series although there a couple of medical posts still awaiting completion and an edit.

Finding sister Susie though.

From my later years as mate and then briefly skipper , when we ran a ships newspaper, i always thought that it was me writing as the stern and rather old fashioned ‘Sister Plume ‘.  I recently contacted my opposite number on the boat, also a nurse and she assures me that it was her writing as the strait-laced traditionalist (sister Sophie) and me writing as the modern sister Susie…..a ‘non directive, non hierarchial area management/ lead nursing facilitator’….or some such totally BS job description.  Frighteningly today there is probably such a job title out there although it’s more likely to have wimmins health , LGBT rights and inclusion in the job description.  Just as a side note here, when i was given the new job description for my last career job it was some 17 pages long…..i think i actually lost the will to live by page 3 !.

Today, as i edit the post prior to scheduling i note that one acute NHS trust has just fired their female and non-white  ‘inclusion and diversity’ manager (£100, 000 per annum salary) for her clearly racist remarks about a while, male department manager who might be a complete knob-end , iv’e no idea…..but that he is actually a person doing a real hospital job …….oh how times have changed when we seem to need ‘diversity‘ managers rather than starched-apron ward sisters of the Sister Plume variety.*

I first met the archetype Sister Plume in the rather matronly shape of my first ward sister, i honestly can’t remember the ladies name today.  She was as strict and severe as you would have expected but of course had a heart of gold had you been able to find it under the layers of starched apron, uniform and i dare say some industrial strength corsetry.

One time, about a month into that first ward placement i was working in a bay on the ward while sister was doing the medicines round from an old style wooden drugs trolley. One of the auxiliaries , today called health-care assistants, came out from behind a curtain and said something to discretely to sister.  The sister locked the drugs cupboard and briefly disappeared behind the same set of curtains.  A moment later she beckoned me over with a steady ‘come with me Mr Yates…always called me mister’ . It was the kind of no nonsense voice and command that would bring a stroppy registrar to heel or have a student nurse in tears.    We stepped behind the curtains, sister was standing close enough that she was able to whisper very quietly that the patient had just passed away and that i was at about the right point in my career to experience that.  It wasn’t a great shock, the old boy was slumped against his pillows, mouth open, eyes shut, clearly grey and very dead.  If i remember it properly sister used my strength to support the body while she got the backrest down and pillows out such that we could lay the body flat.

The ward sister then ‘invited’ me into the office and what i met then was a completely different side of her…basically kind and caring enough to explain that it’s a good start to see your first dead one with someone steady.  I think i was steady enough myself to ask a couple of sensible questions : what we needed to do next and such like.

I remember thinking then , or shortly after, that it was a very ‘English’ kind of death : the old boy having passed away just after his morning tea and without any sense of distress or even the slightest complaint.

Years later i was to end my then career as a cardiac intensive care nurse one night shift in the most visceral way possible in a modern hospital…..with my hands actually inside a patient’s chest, doing internal cardiac massage….in simple terms squeezing the heart , while me and the surgical registrar tried to contain the blood hosing out of the patient’s aorta….very messy, very distressing and ultimately futile.

Iv’e been thinking a lot recently about image and uniform as it relates to nursing, and after having written a short piece as a response to another youtuber : quickly written and as quickly taken down again as it didn’t think i’d put across what i was trying to say. In one section i was trying to say that the overall respect for nurses and nursing has gone down and down over the last 10 years or so and very much at the hands of the MSM (mainstream media).  At one time nurses were always portrayed as angels, now it’s more likely that they are shown turning up in court for anything from drink and drugs charges to fraud , neglect and manslaughter.

Sadly it’s true that some nurse managers , modern matrons to name one variety, chose to focus on the petty and quotidean minor points of detail, who’s hair isn’t up ‘enough’ who is wearing too many body piercings and who is wearing the ‘wrong’ shoes….rather than dealing with the serious stuff such as thinking about why we can’t retain staff.  I don’t want to come across as a uniform bore and, like Herreshoff, always hark back to a time that was somehow ‘better’ but in nursing it might just be true.

I remember the first day of ‘PTS’ (preliminary training school) which was the first day that the girls got their uniforms. In my white smock and with a mess of scruffy red hair i looked like a manic dentist crossed with a carrot.   Of course most of their uniforms  didn’t fit as the standard shape that they were made in, in different sizes, weren’t designed for the long/tall/ narrow/wide and smaller or larger busted among them.   There was much hilarity and some degree of embarrassment as the class first donned the uniform and got used to the totally silly paper caps with their one blue stripe to indicate that we were first year students. When they/we all qualified they all moved into fetching light grey as staff nurses, many bought linen caps and silver belt buckles so although ‘uniform’ there were subtle individual differences.

At around the same time there were those, usually the so called nursing leaders of the time that considered the uniform old fashioned and nothing more than a parody of a Victorian parlour maid.  Just after that the traditional belt and cap were removed and the new uniform may well have been the corporate dress of somewhere like MacDonalds or Tesco. I won’t say that the old style uniform was always totally functional but it was often elegant and presented the nurse in a way that the public liked and respected…generally speaking.    Today, in our department we wear what look like baggy pyjamas , like surgical scrubs but not quite as functional and patients usually have to ask what individuals do…..most days i get called ‘Doctor’ unless i have specifically introduced myself as a staff nurse.

I am of course wrong, but i feel something has been lost, whatever…i look terrible in stockings !

*Just for your reference.

Finding Sister Susie. A curious cabinet post. Once a month now i intend to post an update on the '