“Don't want a life of lies and pretence,
Don't want to play at attack and defence.
Just want my own life. I want to be free,
So you ca n be you, and I can be ME”

You Can Be Who? - Crass

- Weds July 11th 2001 (10:10pm)

So here I am, working my first night shift 8 at night till 8:30 the following day. Its only ten o clock and I already wouldn't mind sleeping. Thank god I have this notepad and pen for company. Since I started working in the hospital so many people have said to me, “Jesus I could never do that” etc. Same way the teachers at school tired to tell me social care was pointless and depressing, and to do something like business instead. The fact that social care was what I wanted to do seemed to take the back seat in their eyes (sure I was a seventeen year old kid what would I know about my dreams!). But despite all their begrudgery I do love working here, yep it's tiring, the hours are fucked up and the system within the place is about as organised as a Mormon piss up, but overall I love it. I got to admit I do get a great buzz off helping people and in my eyes social care fits in perfectly with what I want to be and what I believe I am about. It doesn't compromise my beliefs and ethics, which as stupid as it may sound to those of you longer in the tooth than me, sometimes my ethics and beliefs are all I feel I have, so that's why I hold onto them so dearly.

Yep it can get depressing, death, grief, pain and more but it's the little bits of appreciation that make it worthwhile. The reason why I am on this rant probably explains it all. See I just was down in the Intensive Care Unit helping to move a patient in his bed, change his incontinence pads, bedsores etc. Now this man is 85, he can't speak a word at the moment due to getting a tube put into his neck and throat (ya know the gross looking ones) and he can barely nod for yes and no. So anyway I had helped fix him up and change him for about a half an hour or so and just as I was about to leave he reached out his hand grasped mine and shook it. A man who hadn't enough strength to talk did that do me just to say thanks, and that is one of the wee reasons why I love this whole caring malarkey. The more I think about it the more I smile which is a big difference from how I felt before I came into work today. So social care is depressing is it? Well in my eyes at least there are these moments of happiness, try finding that in a bank job on any other day other than pay day, I think not, you'd be hard pressed to fin it at all.

(The ironic thing is that four hours later u had to restrain this same man cause he kept hitting the nurses, it's a mixed bag alright but never ever ever boring, ya can keep yer bank jobs I'm doing just fine.)

Spudmonkey999 (Ed)
Email: spudmonkey999@hotmail.com
Mail: Ed Hannon, Downings Cross, Prosperous,
Naas, Co. Kildare, Eire.