Category: Health and Well-Being

Posted in Health and Well-Being, Self-Discovery, Stress Relief

Hope Still Springs Eternal

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

I know myself enough by now to recognise when I’m starting to spiral, when I’ve given so much of myself to sorting out everyone else’s problems that I’m practically an empty tank, still going for miles and miles but running mostly on fumes and a stubborn determination to not let the world get the best of me.

But sometimes it does.

And there’s no shame in it. There’s no shame in admitting that you’re not able to solve all of the world’s problems because a) you’re not supposed to and b) its probably healthier to admit defeat than to burn out completely.

Look, I get it. Life is hard. We do what we need to do to survive, and sometimes its harder for those of us who have chosen positions of leadership or power because it comes with an obligation to find solutions. And also, somehow that minute difference in pay grades puts a target on your back, and people think they have the right to come at you for every single thing.

You work 37.5 hours a day with this delusional mindset of world-saving that sometimes you forget that you are more than your job. You are not this stiff-upper-lip, uber-serious, managerial person who goes around with to-do-lists and QR codes and who spends what feels like their entire existence either looking at or analysing spreadsheets.

You’re also a reader, a writer, a dreamer, a hopeless romantic who cries over love stories, someone who doesn’t know East from West when trying to sort out directions on Google maps, and you’re someone who, even at 35, doesn’t quite have their shit together and probably never will. You will always be a bit of a mess.

I needed today to feel human again.

To feel like myself again. To not feel hopeless, like you’re only putting out fires long enough to get to the next safe space, so you can have at least 30 minutes of respite and breathing room, before the flames once again start battering through those fire doors.

There are days when I find it a little difficult just to find space to breathe.

There are days when I feel like I’m going through the motions, when I start feeling worn down by the sheer number of things I can’t fix, so I resign myself to just getting through the day, and its not really fulfilling. I don’t really feel like I’m making a difference. Sometimes I think by trying to make things better for someone, I end up making things worse for someone else.

I think this was the feeling that made me reach out to my old alma mater, practically begging for an opportunity to teach undergraduate nurses again even if I have to do it for free.

At the time, I was barely coping. I was seeing a therapist maybe twice a week for anxiety and excessive worry and I found myself writing and deleting a resignation letter every five minutes. I think working out with F45 was the only thing that got me through the day and even that wasn’t enough.

I needed the distraction, but more than that, I needed to remember what it felt like to make an impact, to make a difference.

Thankfully the Philippines will always be in need of nurses and Clinical Instructors, so with slight trepidation I agreed to take on a full Medical-Surgical Nursing course load.

For the past 5 weeks I’ve been using what little spare time I have in between a full time job and my extra curricular activities making notes and PowerPoint presentations and pre-recording lectures. I’ve been getting up at 3:30 am to have interactive sessions to discuss case studies, making questions for pre-tests and post-tests and long exams, answering multiple queries from students an entire continent away….and I’ve never felt happier.

I’ve forgotten how natural a fit being a teacher is for me, how at ease I am doing it, how much joy I derive from watching that light bulb moment reflected in another person’s eyes.

We find so few pockets of joy these days that I think we should hold on to the things that give us the same feeling as we did when we first discovered the taste of chocolate ice cream, or when we first heard our favourite song, or took our first steps in the city of our dreams.

I’ve forgotten how good it is to feel like you still have the rest of your life ahead of you, that you can still do some good, rather than feel like you’re failing all of the time.

So than you, Velez College, for the gift of my education, and for being my refuge against hopelessness, even after all these years.

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Posted in Health and Well-Being, Lifestyle, london, Self-Discovery, Stress Relief

Learning Mandarin: A Journey of Language and Learning and Finding Myself

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

Part 1: Self-Image: 我是张丽安. My name is Angela.

I learned how to read and write my name in Chinese 张丽安 (zhāng lì ān) even before I learned how to write it in English.

The very first sentence I ever learned in any language is 我是中国人. 

This literally translates to I (我 wǒ) + am (是 shì) + China (中国 zhōng guó) + person (人 rén).

I find it somewhat ironic that pretty much as soon as I learned to speak I was using Chinese to reaffirm my identity as Chinese, even though I am technically Filipino (菲利宾人) and these days I mostly read, speak and process thoughts in English.

Chinese is the story of my childhood, it’s as much a part of my history as the scars on my legs (because I used to attract mosquitoes like honey to the bees), the lumps on my fingers (from a lifetime of gripping my pens too hard) and my craving for sweets whenever I’m stressed. 

I have a very complicated relationship with Chinese – the language, the culture, and that part of me that is undeniably 中国人. I can’t help but associate it with the feeling of being boxed in, with that constant pressure to conform to certain societal and cultural standards. 

As I saw it, to be Chinese (and to be Filipino on top of that) required adherance to long-standing traditions: the subservient role of the woman, the obligation to prioritise managing a home over having a career, and the expectation that certain milestones – like marriage and giving birth – has to occur by a certain age. Anyone who knows me can see why this would chafe. 

I went through a period of my life where I was determined to make everyone, including myself, forget that I was Filipino-Chinese. I’m not really sure if this was a conscious decision, if it was a direct result of me wanting to rebel against expectations, or if there were other mental calisthenics involved.

But for the first few years of my life in London I was on a mission to be more British than even the British. More European than the Europeans. The most Westernised non-Westerner you will ever meet. Anything apart from Asian.  

I embraced all the opportunities and freedom that my adoptive home had to offer, wide-eyed and dreamy, like Rapunzel stepping out of the tower for the first time. I tried my hardest to make friends with non-Asians, to be invited to Friday nights at the local pub, to learn to love Sunday roasts, and to go to house parties where no one served adobo.

I tried to enrich my mind with the right kind of books and television shows so that I can be conversant in the sort of topics that my non-Asian colleagues talk about, to like art and history, and pretend to know the rules of rugby (I really DON’T) – all whilst revelling, with embarrassing superiority, in my “excellent” grasp of the English language (spoken with an American accent of course, but some things can’t be helped).

But I guess once you reach a certain age, you suddenly realise how exhausting it is to wake up every morning feeling like you always have something to prove, and to constantly have to put on a mask that hurts your face because the dimensions don’t fit.  You get to a point where you realise that you have the right to breathe, and to just be, same as everybody else.  

So, you take what feels like the first gulp of air after years of drowning, and then you begin the long process of taking a long hard look at and reconciling all the parts that make you uniquely you. 

It feels a little awkward and scary at first, like putting a t-shirt on for the first time after a long hard winter of wearing jumpers. It feels like you have to have some kind of jacket, some kind armour, because you don’t know if you can bear to be so exposed. But then you walk out the door and you realise your skin is made of much tougher stuff than you thought it was.

There’s a tiny spring in your step that gets bigger the further you go, when you suddenly realise that you’re going to be okay. 

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Posted in fitness, Health and Well-Being, Lifestyle, Stress Relief, Travel

More Life Lessons From Hiking

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

I always get a little pensive and philosophical after a long, vigorous hike.

Oh, who am I kidding. I get pensive and philosophical after doing something as mundane and trivial as taking a shower. I am, always have been, and always will be the perennial navel-gazer. You guys are just going to have to learn to live with it.

But I did find myself on a spontaneous hike along the Peak District yesterday with three of my closest friends. This has been a dream of mine ever since I first saw Kiera Knightley standing on the edge of some rock, skirts dramatically blowing in the wind even as her hair stays Hollywood-perfect, a thoughtful look on her face as she reflected on the massive, gargantuan stupidity of having inexplicably rejected the gorgeous Fitzwilliam Darcy.

There weren’t any handsome millionaires to be seen anywhere near the Peak yesterday, or if there were they must have been hiding their presence under a rock because I certainly didn’t see them. Or maybe I was just too busy making sure I don’t fall and hurt myself as I climbed up the steep path to Stanage Edge.

It’s funny, I’m always the first to push to go on these hikes, yet I know for a fact that I am the least fit person amongst my circle of friends and I will also be the first to whinge about what a stupid idea the whole thing is in the first place as I huff and puff and make my way through the planned route.

But the views, the fresh air, and the sheer exhilaration of being out in nature (and having beaten that constant voice in my head telling me I couldn’t do it), sure makes it worth all the effort.

Hiking provides one with a lot of opportunity to think and reflect, something I haven’t done a lot lately but have promised myself to try and do at least once a week. You really do get a lot of life lessons from hiking and I’m going to try and put some of those into words and record them here for posterity, in the hopes that if ever I need reminding, or if anyone else needs a similar reminder, they will be here for me and the world to see.

Firstly, there is no substitute for investing in things that will make your hike (or your life) easier in the long run. Stretchy pants and waterproof jackets might not make up the prettiest outfit for an Instagram-worthy photo, and hiking shoes may look fugly as hell, but boy will you be glad for them when you’re scrambling up rocks or walking down muddy terrains.

Make sure you’re on stable ground before you take the next big step, or before you take the next leap on your climb up to the top. If you’re not careful, the path could so easily crumble from beneath you. And remember, shiny surfaces can be deceiving as hell.

Sometimes the journey can seem like a relentless uphill battle, and you’ll want to quit, turn around and just go back. But you have to just keep moving forward. Huff, puff, whinge, and bitch all you want, but don’t stop moving. Because there’s always an end to the struggle; one way or another the path always evens out.

That being said, there is no shame in admitting that you’re struggling to breathe and that you need to pause for a break. You don’t always have to keep pace with others, you only need to keep pace with yourself.

Don’t be too busy watching your every step that you forget to look up and soak in the beauty of what the hike (and life in general) has to offer. It would be a shame if all you did was get from point A to point B, and you missed out on all the beauty in between.

Take lots of photos. Some day, everything and everyone will be gone and you’ll long for every single thing that would remind you of the good times (and maybe even the bad), and you’ll be hoarding those photographs like a miser with his money. So take the time to take a snap, take a selfie or two or several.

And finally, it always comes down to the people. Having someone who would cheer you on, someone to sing silly songs with as you make The Climb, someone to make jokes with even if the jokes are at your expense, knowing that someone will be there to make sure you don’t fall, or at least knowing that someone will be there to catch you if you do (even if they laugh first and help later)…having GOOD people to take with you on that journey makes all the difference in the world.

Mel. Angelica. Alex. Good people. Maybe even the best people. 🙂

That’s it for now until my next struggle, I mean, hike. Have a good week ahead, everyone!

Posted in Careers, Health and Well-Being, Lifestyle, Writing

What Makes You Happy

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

I’ve been writing for as long as I could remember. Growing up, I used to fill up pages and pages of random notebooks and diaries (some of them with actual locks and keys) with entries about my extraordinarily ordinary life: bad-hair days, arguments with adults who will never understand me and whose purpose in life seemed to be ruining mine, the dramas of female friendships at an age when friends can be particularly cruel, and of course, boys, boys, and more boys.

From the time I discovered that boys were fascinating creatures who did not, in fact, have cooties, I’ve been writing about them. Nick Carter, my first crush, with his glorious blond hair, and a singing voice that seemed perpetually stuck in that moment between adolescence and manhood.

The popular guy in class whom every girl had a crush on, and every one of them was jealous of little old me because I was privileged enough to be close friends with him, the first of my many forays into the friend zone.

There was the bad boy that my father disapproved of, the boyfriend of a close friend that I had a serious crush on, the nemesis who was the Arnold to my Helga all throughout high school (I even have the cheesy poems to show for it), the summer love who I still think of as the one who got away.

And of course, there’s the big one. My One Great Love. The one boy/man/whatever who will forever be my muse, because writing about my feelings for him, unrequited as they are, will give me reams of material with which to write blogs, sonnets, and books about until the end of time. Everything that he is (or was) to me, every single tear and heartbreak, the exquisite pleasure/pain of having come so close but never getting close enough…there’s so much to unpack that if I put it all in one volume it will reach War and Peace proportions.

This blog entry is not, in fact, about the many guys I have given pieces of my heart to. Actually, this is probably the most aimless blog entry I will ever make, because I woke up today full of random thoughts about life in general and growing up and being an adult in particular.

I started thinking about how we live so much of our lives as if we were running a race and we’re smack dab in the middle of the pack: always looking back at who and what we’ve left behind and forever running after the ones that have sprinted before us, hoping to either keep pace with them, or race past them on the way to some arbitrary finish line.

Its exhausting.

I’ve had several conversations these past couple of weeks about mental health and how important it is for a person to feel self-actualised – or at least to feel like a complete human being with their own goals, dreams, and aspirations. It was easier when we were younger to dream impossible things. it wasn’t ludicrous at all to dream about being presidents, or astronauts, or in my case, an Olympic figure skater. Somehow when we grow up we subsume all of that into the daily task of surviving.

It became more important to find a job that pays the rent than it is to find something that really gives you fulfilment.

I got the closest thing to the job of my dreams this year when I became education lead for a building that focuses on orthopaedics, a speciality that I love so much. I put everything I had into getting the project off the ground and I don’t know at what point I started to feel lost, or when I started to feel like I didn’t know myself anymore, like I exist only as another cog in the huge machinery that is the NHS and I have no life outside the operating theatre.

All I know is that I blinked and suddenly two whole months have gone by and I haven’t done a single thing that wasn’t related to health care, nor have I written a single thing that wasn’t an email to our procurement team, with an itemised lists of things that I felt they should be doing better. It was so depressing.

I looked at social media and only felt worse. Other people my age were out there achieving things, travelling even in the midst of a pandemic, getting married, having babies, buying houses…and I felt like I had nothing. No matter how many times I told myself that comparing my life to the heavily curated lies lives shown through the imperfect lens of social media is counterproductive, I couldn’t help scrolling through it anyway, and I’m not (nor will I ever be) strong enough to deactivate all of my accounts.

When I finally made time to have a moment to myself to just write, it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders and I felt like me again. I didn’t even write anything all that important, it was probably another book review that got like 15 views and was filled with rants about the government’s handling of covid. Either that or it was about boys (lol).

But it didn’t really matter what I wrote about. I realised that the whole point was just to write. Period.

When I started this blog, I had a whole vision of what it could be and I was disappointed to realise years later that I would never be able to commit to doing it full-time, and I just didn’t have it in me to be a blogger, with all the pressure to produce marketable content every so often. So I channeled my energies into writing a book, only to be in despair at the start of this year because I felt like I would never have enough time or energy to write all the stories that live inside my head that I actually want to tell people.

I said to myself, face it Anj, you will die having never been a writer.

But then I thought about what writing means to me. it’s a way to reach people and share little bits of myself in the hopes of being seen and understood. It’s a way to make people laugh, cry, or maybe even just think. It’s a way of challenging the way other people see the world when I express opinions they might not necessarily agree with. But mostly it’s just a way of giving the gift of words to people I love.

Last week, I had a very difficult conversation with a friend who means so much to me, and I didn’t feel like what I said was adequate enough to give her comfort, or to convey that I might never be able to fully understand what she was going through but I was here for her nonetheless. So I wrote her a poem – free verse, nothing special. I don’t even think I followed the correct structure for free verse, but whatever. I just wanted her to have something of her own and hopefully let her know that she’s not alone.

When she read it and loved it, I realised that all this time I’ve been bemoaning my inability to become a writer but by my own definition of what writing is to me, wasn’t I already one? Sure, I haven’t published an international bestseller, but in my own little way, haven’t I been reaching people through the medium of words for as long as I’ve known that the letters of the alphabet were more than just random ABCs?

The long and short of it is that putting words to paper makes me happy. It doesn’t have to be a big production. I could just be writing about boys, haha, a running theme in my life until I finally find that all elusive someone. Although I’d like to think I’ve matured enough to be able to write about other things as well.

I don’t need my writing be validated by likes or follows on social media. I already spend so much of my time being different things to different people but when I write, I write just for me. And no matter how busy life gets, no matter how stressed I am, no matter how much life or other people around me might stretch me to the point of breaking, as long as I can still write, I know I’ll be okay.

I think it’s essential that we all find that one thing that still gives us a spark of joy even as the daily grind tries to dim our sparkle. There has to be something more to life than just existing. We need to be able to wake up each morning knowing we have a purpose, knowing that life has meaning and that life still has joy. Because otherwise, what’s the point really?

If you find that one thing you do just for you that makes you happy, hold on to it, find time for it, and (to borrow from Nike) just do it. Who knows? It might even be possible to make the impossible dreams you dreamt when you were younger come true. It could still happen. And with that, let me find out how much ice skating lessons in London cost. The Winter Olympics is coming soon. LOL.

Posted in Covid-19, Current Events, Health and Well-Being, Nursing

It’s Been a Long Year…and It’s Only the Start of May

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

Sometimes it feels like this lockdown will never end.

Its been roughly six weeks since the UK imposed measures that essentially robbed life of any semblance of normalcy. Since then, we’ve all been trying our damnedest to keep our spirits up even as we become increasingly isolated from our fellow man.

Every day there seems to be new challenges cropping up on social media (like doing 20 press-ups on your instagram story and then challenging five other people to do the same) or an at-home concert organised by one pop star or the other, and what both those things have in common is that it speaks to our inherent need to stay connected even as social distancing becomes the new normal.

I might just be speaking for myself here, but I think this unprecedented crisis has heightened our sense of empathy and compassion for others. All of a sudden the number of people showing support for the NHS and recognising the work that carers do has increased tenfold. Young people now go out of their way to buy groceries for elderly neighbours. Colleagues who don’t normally get along have learned to put their differences aside so they can work together and do what’s best for the department they work for.

Personally, what this pandemic is teaching me, above all else, is that in times of pain and suffering no one is a stranger.

This week another nurse lost the battle to Covid-19, three weeks after his admission to one of the best hospitals in the country. He was my age.

Like me, he was an overseas nurse who left the Philippines to pursue a career in a foreign country, in the hopes that it will lead to a better life for himself and his family.

Like most of my friends, he dreamed of opportunities and adventures the likes of which we never would have experienced if we stayed in the Philippines.

Like tens of thousands of Filipinos before him, he bore the loneliness, the frequent homesickness, and the separation from family because he believed his future laid here, in his adopted country.

When I heard about the story of his death, I cried like a baby.

Despite having plenty of common friends, in every sense of the word this person was a virtual stranger to me. And yet his death affected me to a degree that goes beyond what you would normally feel for someone you didn’t know from Adam.

Maybe his story hit a little too close to home. I don’t want to dwell too much on how his story could so easily be our story, because that kind of thinking is just too morbid to contemplate. But all the same, on the day of his death I said a little prayer for every overseas Filipino nurse I know, and even for those that I don’t.

I’m not really sure how to end this post that has turned out to be more morose than I intended it to be when I first started writing.

I guess I just wanted to say that the longer this goes on, the deeper we may have to dig within ourselves to stay upbeat and positive.

But we can’t let this virus defeat us. I have every hope that this too shall pass, that there is a life waiting on the other side of this pandemic, and that we will all be better, more understanding, and hopefully kinder people for having lived through it.

We owe it to the people who have lost their lives to this virus, and especially to the people who have given their lives in caring for people with this virus, to ensure that we never ever take that life for granted.

Posted in bloggers, Health and Well-Being, Medical

The Weight of the World

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

In most dystopian/apocalyptic movies there’s always that one person willing to stay behind to detonate a bomb that will obliterate an asteroid into a million pieces, thus delaying the end of the world and ensuring we get to live to die another day.

And then there’s the other guy, the guy who will fight tooth and nail to make sure he has a spot on the last lifeboat so he doesn’t sink with the Titanic, the guy who runs the other way when it looks like shit is going to hit the fan, the one who gets going when the going gets rough.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this as we enter the third week of lockdown. The reality of what we’re experiencing has started to sink in and I would be lying if I said it hasn’t affected me psychologically. I’d feel like a fraud if I tell everyone to stay positive, because that is the complete opposite of what I’m feeling these days.

I’m a nurse and I work for the NHS. Full disclosure, I don’t have the skill set necessary to work on the frontlines in the ITU, but at the moment there are still other health battles being fought out there that are not related to Covid19, such as cancer patients who need surgery to survive, and they too deserve equal care and attention.

That is what our team are focusing on at the moment: ensuring that everyone who needs an operation can still get one done, while on the background the situation with coronavirus gets worse and worse, hard to ignore, and putting added pressure on an already stressful environment.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have never been one to stay on the sidelines. Its not overstating it to say that I have natural leadership abilities. It stems from the desire to be useful, from the need to make a difference.

But I also have extreme control issues. I often find it difficult to see the big picture because I get fixated on the smallest details. I need facts, and I need clear instructions. I like rules, and I like guidelines, because I think the world would be a much better place if we were all singing from the same hymn sheet.

So its not surprising, with all the uncertainty and fluidity going on, that my nerves have been feeling a little frayed. No one can really say what the best course of action is, so things change from one breath to the next and its driving me bonkers. I felt myself to be on the verge of some sort of breakdown last week, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

In my line of work I am used to being the person in charge, the person people run to when they want someone to make a decision. And normally I would be fine with that, but there is nothing normal about this. I don’t feel equipped to make those decisions. Both as a healthcare professional and as a leader I have never felt more out of my depth than I’ve felt these past couple of weeks.

Every time I had to make a decision, I second guessed myself. It felt like no matter what you do you were doing something wrong. In the space of half an hour you’d have someone complimenting you for a job well done and another telling you that what you’re doing is a complete waste of time and resources.

It got to the point where I thought to myself, I can’t do this anymore. I would rather be the one doing the work than the one calling the shots. It made me realise that we don’t fully appreciate how much of a toll all of this takes on leaders, be it hospital management or government officials.

Its so easy to whinge and point out the flaws in the plan. Its harder when you’re the person people expect to come up with the plan in the first place.

I finally made the choice last week to take a few days off in order to have a little R and R. I spent four days in my living room couch, with a mound of pillows and a wool blanket, creating what my sister called my little “nest”, and having an Agents of Shield marathon. There was an element of denial to what I was doing, focusing on other people and their fictional problems, but I make no apologies for the methods I employ to cope with stress.

And I make no apologies for the box of stuffed crust pepperoni pizza I consumed to make myself feel better.

I guess my point in all of this is to say that sometimes, its okay to be the guy in the movie who’s just doing what he can to survive. Its okay to pass the buck to someone else when you feel like you’re not coping anymore, to say ‘I’m way in over my head here, I don’t know what to do, and I need help.”

Not that I’m urging anyone to be selfish, and I’m not telling anyone to stop doing all they can to make a difference. But what I AM saying is that you don’t need to be a hero, you don’t need to be the person with all the answers ALL THE TIME. No one expects that of you, and you shouldn’t expect it of yourself.

The healthiest thing I did last week was to remind myself that its not all down to me. I need to focus on the things that I have control over and let go of the things that I don’t.

Don’t put the weight of the world on your shoulders. Its bad for your mental health. Leave the heroics to the fictional superheroes of the world. The rest of us just live here, doing what we can, and that’s perfectly fine too.

Posted in Health and Well-Being, Medical

Education is Key

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

Its the weekend and I’ve never been so glad to see the end of a work week. Everyone’s a bit tense, and I think we’re all bracing ourselves because it feels a little bit like the calm before the storm. We’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop, and anyone who says they’re not even a little bit terrified is either obtuse or lying.

I think everyone’s a bit frazzled in a controlled, productive sort of way. It’s the kind of mild anxiety that leads to contingency plans being sorted and people being mobilised. My personal belief in all of this is that we need to educate as many people as we can on precautions, and what type of personal protective equipment (PPE) to use.

Essentially, coronavirus is spread through droplet transmission, meaning you can get it directly if you’re within 6 feet of anyone who coughs or sneezes. You can also get it indirectly if you touch surfaces that have been contaminated by those droplets. It enters via our mucous membranes, so that’s eyes, nose and mouth. For health care workers, the risk is when we do aerosol-generating procedures like intubation or suctioning because then the virus becomes airborne and can then travel greater distances.

Masks are useful, but really standard precaution and good hand-washing are the gold standard. This is an enveloped virus that is susceptible to alcohol-based products, so hand sanitisers and Clinell wipes are effective against it. Soap and water will do just fine but it takes a bit longer to get rid of the virus that way. The FFP3 mask will give protection when the virus becomes airborne and should be worn by those that need it the most, especially when resources become scant. The virus can stay on surfaces for a few days unless you clean it. A lot of this information is available on Public Health England, and the guidelines are continuously updated.

Personally, I am exhausted from talking and training all day. I feel a bit drained from doing information boards and making grab bags that staff can take in case they need to respond rapidly in an emergency. But I feel like I need to do my part in all of this. I will not have the necessary skills for when patients become acutely unwell, but education and preparation I can do.

I’ve never felt the weight of being a health care professional more than I did the past couple of weeks. Someone texted me today to say he thought we’re all heroes, and I got a bit teary-eyed because most of the time I feel like we’re not doing enough, but actually just willing to be on the frontlines is probably more than enough. One of my colleagues said she thought I looked tired and was getting pulled into too many directions at once, and she thought we should have a meeting to plan how to support me in the next couple of weeks. Another was working side by side with me sorting out packs, laminating and putting up signs and doing what it takes to get the job done.

I’m not pretending everything’s all rosy in the NHS, but I don’t feel alone either. There’s people willing to help, and everyone’s genuinely trying their best. I think people are looking out for each other, and I know everyone will pull together so its all hands on deck if it gets crazy.

So yeah, I guess we are heroes. Heroes that also need to take care of themselves so we can do our jobs in the coming weeks. So I’m heading off to sleep now, tired, but feeling light-hearted and optimistic about our chances of getting though this.

Posted in family, Health and Well-Being, Medical

Home is where the heart is

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

As the Philippines goes on lockdown I find my thoughts straying to where it usually goes these days as news about the spread of coronavirus pile up daily: my family.

I’ve adjusted reasonably well to being an overseas worker, living far from home and being away from my parents and most of the people I love. But its times like these when the reality of being an OFW hits you the most, when you are helpless to do anything except give your parents advice through Facebook and hope to God they’re keeping themselves safe.

There is nothing more I want to do right now than take my dad’s vital signs and check if mum is taking her daily dose of Vitamin C. I want to make sure they have supplies of paracetamol and face masks. I’m torn between telling them to stay in the remote area where we live, where the risk for contracting the virus is lower but where medical care is laughably rubbish, or telling them to go to the city where I have more confidence in the health care system but also where the number of tourists (and the sheer number of people) makes me really twitchy.

Mum goes to church every day, it is an essential part of who she is. I want to advise her not to do that anymore until this passes, but at the same time I can’t help but feel like, at this point, prayers along with sensible hand washing will get us through the day. I found myself this week going to church every day after work. The other day there was an elderly couple there praying the rosary, the only other people apart from myself in that cavernous house of worship. I stayed a bit to join them. The whole time I can hear mum’s voice in my head telling me I’m doing the right thing.

This is a really rambling post, I know. It’s mostly borne out of worry, and this really strong urge I got this morning to jump on a plane and just be with family. I used to revel in my independence, and I loved the thought of being in the big city and making it on my own. But when push comes to shove, and the world goes to hell in a hand basket, home really is the only place where I want to be. And at the moment that is not a geographic location, its a facebook messenger group where all the members of my family gather to share bits and pieces of our separate lives.

At the moment that will have to be enough…

Posted in Health and Well-Being, london, Medical

Err on the side of caution…

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

I’ve been glued to Twitter and the news for any updates on the so-called ‘delay’ measures that the British government is supposedly announcing today. So far all I’ve got is a bunch of tweets criticising the Tory government (elected by the majority of the people. Just saying) and soundbites from our fearless leader that, if true, makes me really scared about how this country is going to cope when things take a turn for the worse.

Meanwhile in the Philippines, our President has shut down travel by land, air or sea to and from the capital, an unpopular decision but one that will hopefully help contain the virus. President Trump has issued a lockdown on all travel to and from Europe, except the UK. Other countries will no doubt follow suit. One can’t help but think, well what about us? Apart from the heightened paranoia there hasn’t been a drastic change in the daily lives of the British public; at least, not in London.

I made the decision today to cancel my planned trip to Greece. I’m pretty sure I’d be fine travelling, and I’d probably be able to get back into the country without being placed on quarantine. But I just feel like things are changing so much at the moment and everything is so up in the air that now really isn’t the time to be visiting instagram-worthy tourist sites. Besides, as much as visions of being stranded in Athens and eating gyros and pitas for a couple of weeks might be appealing to some, if the worst happens I’d much rather be in a familiar environment, close to my beloved NHS.

I guess the point of all of this is that I would much rather err on the side of caution rather than take unnecessary risks. I love travelling as much as the next person, and it pains me to think about all the disruptions this might potentially cause to planned family trips and get-togethers. But I’d much rather be alive to travel without worrying about the threat of severe illness next year when this would have all boiled over (fingers crossed).

I’ve also decided not to put too much stock on what they say in the news. I mean I’d keep myself updated about travel bans and government measures and whatnot, but for every expert that says we’re all doomed there’s another one that says we’re all going to be fine. I think the thing to do is focus on the things that we can control, like personal hygiene and cleaning of surfaces and taking our daily vitamins. We can try to be reasonable and sensible about social distancing, and we should definitely think about how our actions could affect others. Like I said in a previous post, a crisis is not an excuse to forget basic human decency.

I think this coronavirus outbreak has the potential to change the world forever, but I also think people have short memories. Whatever lesson we learn from this I doubt half the world’s population will remember it when the world starts to turn again and we’re all taking selfies before the Trevi fountain once more. Still, its hard to imagine what the outcome of all this will be and where we’ll stand in three months time. It keeps me up at night, wondering if the world will ever be normal again….

Posted in Health and Well-Being, Medical, Nursing

Is it really business as usual?

Posted on by Miss Blabbaholic

I sit here having just had several meetings and training sessions to prepare our staff for an outbreak of coronavirus, a day after Italy imposed a lockdown on the entire country, and I find myself feeling more confused than fearful.

On one hand the news coming out from health care professionals in Bergamo and other regions of Italy that were most affected by coronavirus paint a picture of something almost akin to a war zone. It’s scary to think that in 14 days that could be us.

But of course no one really thinks this will happen to us until it happens. The Prime Minister apparently advised the public to just ‘take it on the chin’, other newspapers still say not to panic, its just another strain of the flu; thousands of people die of the flu each year and no one’s ever made a fuss.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum there’s the doomsday proclaimers who are predicting the apocalypse every chance they get, causing mass hysteria and an ongoing panic buying of – of all things – pasta, paracetamol and bloody toilet paper. If you ask these people we might as well give up on any semblance of normal life right now and accept that we will all be stuck in our homes, quarantined, within the fortnight.

I personally think that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I’m glad that I work for an organisation that seems to be taking the risk very seriously and is doing all that could be done to protect patients and staff.

I had a moment where I imagined what life is going to be like if what happened in Italy does happen to the UK. What will it be like when the call to arms is sounded and its all hands on deck because we have more patients than medics?

Its scary to think about the kind of responsibility I will potentially have by virtue of my profession, and that I don’t have the luxury of refusing to come to duty because I want to look out for myself. I will have to take a backseat to my patients, my needs will be secondary to theirs. To be honest with you I’m not sure I have that kind of selflessness in me, I’m not sure whether I won’t have a moment of selfishness where I question why I have to do these things.

But then I think about soldiers going to war for their country, and where we would be if they refused to fight because they’re scared and they want to look out for themselves. They don’t have the luxury to run, and I’m sure they have selfish moments too, but they somehow find the mental fortitude and courage to be on the frontlines of a war, fighting for freedom and fighting for people they love as well as virtual strangers who might not even remember their names when they die.

I know its a morbid thought, but I guess my main point is only that I hope I find that same fortitude and compassion to do my duty anyway, whether I’m willing or not. I don’t think its wrong to reflect on a very real, very human instinct to run away from it all and survive. But I’m hoping that the instinct to care and to help will prevail.

These are not the kind of thoughts I would normally have on a daily basis. There would normally be more people on the Underground, its unusual to find people who are not Asian tourists walking around Oxford Street with masks on. The overarching feeling seems to be that of paranoia. People are actually being stopped on the street. If you look even remotely Asian, random people will suddenly shout ‘Wuhan!’ and be rude to you, as if you’ve single-handedly brought this virus into the country.

Its day one after Italy made the unprecedented decision to lockdown the country, and even in skeptical UK its not business as usual. I suspect it will get worse before it gets better. I’m probably going to write about unfolding events from my personal perspective in the days to come. In the meantime, keep calm, take reasonable precautions, wash your hands and keep safe everyone!