Dublin; Ireland

I've had annual leave this week. I'm off to Copenhagen at the weekend, but was looking for something to fill up the earlier part of the week. Flights from East Midlands to Dublin were fairly cheap, and serendipitously we realised it was St Paddy's day this week, so less than a week ago this trip got booked.

We spent the majority of the time rat-arsed (Whisky Museum, Guinness Storehouse, Temple Bar, St Paddy's parade), and it turns out our hotel was directly above possibly the liveliest nightclub in Dublin. This was fantastic when we checked it out, but less so three hours later when we wanted a bit of kip, and even more annoying when the fire alarm got set off at 4:20. 

The St Paddy's parade was very confusing. I've got enough Irish friends to know if an event has an advertised starting time of 12:00 then you can rock up at 13:10 and still have bags of time, and this turned out to be bang on... and once it started, it seemed to have been envisioned and orchestrated by primary school children. The few parts of it which had any relation to Irish culture or history included military marching, but even this had no rhythm or co-ordination, and whenever the procession paused the soldiers turned around and chatted with each other... one even blew bubbles with his gum! 

Before the parade we faced a difficult decision - were our last €10 to be spent on food, or on souvenirs? The outcome was overwhelmingly in favour of this shite.

Following up from my last post, I was contacted by a magazine who'd seen my story on the meningitis website and wanted to feature me in their next issue. I'm not sure why I felt reluctant to agree, but I asked for time to think before making a decision. I'm very glad I did, because I used that time to check out 'Pick Me Up' and found cover story gems such as: "RAPED by the devil", "Killer confessions: I wanted to EAT her alive" and, my personal favourite, a photo of a baby with the headline "my mummy thought I was a POO". I called them back to politely decline.

Love Emily x

Fame!

My story has been published as part of the Meningitis Now campaign to raise awareness of the huge range of symptoms someone with the illness might have. They've put a slightly melodramatic spin on it, but nothing (except rounding up my length of stay to 2 months) is untrue. 

You can read it here, if you want to: https://www.meningitisnow.org/support-us/news-centre/meningitis-stories/emily-stringers-story/ 

Love Emily x

Rygge, Oslo and Bergen; Norway

Yesterday I hopped on a flight to Rygge, and then got a train to Oslo. I stayed the night in Oslo, and this morning caught a train to Bergen. The Oslo-Bergan rail route is meant to be one of the best train rides in the world, and having done the trip I think that's a fairly solid claim to make!

I was extremely lucky with the weather - below is the state of Rygge station when I turned up!

The train route travells over, through and around mountains, as well as running alongside fjords. This scenery must be beautiful at any time, but it was stunning with the thickest layer of snow I've ever seen. I'm a bit disappointed with the quality of these photos, but it's very difficult to take good snow landscapes through a window of a brightly lit moving train...

Some of the fjords we travelled past - easily the width of the Thames - were frozen. You can see this little one starting to thaw out.

I tried to include some houses, if only to prove these aren't black and white photos!

Spot the house and pylons for perspective!

When I told people about this trip the first question most asked was "who are you doing that with?", and the usual response was a 1:2 ratio of admiration and exasperation when I replied "no-one, just me". It's been one of the most hassle-free journeys I've ever taken, and the UK can learn a lot from the Norwegian public transport system! Also, the ultimate deal-sweetener, I got 1ltr of vodka for NOK 99 (£7.63). 

Now to get planning my next jolly: Denmark in March. Maybe doing some work to pay for it, too.

Love Emily x

Goodbye, 2015

I re-read the post I wrote this time last year, and I'm pretty confident I can beat it. 2015 has been awesome. 

In my end-of-2014 post I spoke about how lucky I felt to be training for my job. Now I've qualified and been working for a couple of months I feel no less lucky, but often a lot more stressed. It's still very hard to think "on balance, this is still fulfilling" when you have to change scrubs, forget about wearing underwear for the rest of the shift, and try to filter out the lingering smell of amniotic fluid in your hair... but I wouldn't do anything else!

The year where my health is worse than 2014 will probably be the year I die. 2015 wasn't perfect, but it was significantly better. My progress with transverse myelitis has plateaued, but I'm at a point where I'd be happy to stay for the rest of my life. Leg movement is (near enough) back to my normal: I'm bouldering, cycling, and rowing. Sensation is still fairly impaired, and I'm still obliviously breaking toes and bruising legs, but I've only been in complete agony with nerve pain 5 times this year - I'll take that! Now it's been nearly 15 months it's looking unlikely that I'll get any more bladder sensation back, but I saw my urologist a couple of weeks ago who feels the risks of spinal surgery to possibly correct this aren't worth the potential benefits. I agree, and whilst I'd rather not be catheterising for the rest of my life, I'm definitely grateful that I've been dealt retention instead of incontinence.

Earlier this month I met my new gastro consultant in Nottingham. He seemed very unimpressed with my switch to vegetarianism (still going strong!), but conceded that I'm possibly the best nourished I've been in a decade. I got a bit better after my little Crohn's relapse in Africa, but now I seem to be heading downhill again. I've re-started azathioprine (an immunosupressant drug most commonly used after organ transplants), and I'm having scans for a ?bowel stricture (a narrowing of the bowel caused by scarring), but it's barely affecting my life at the moment.

My first Christmas as a vegetarian was surprisingly un-disappointing, and working whilst everyone else was off wasn't as annoying as I thought it would be. Let's do 2016!

Love Emily x

Heidelberg, Germany

Since my last post most of my life has been consumed by midwifery, but last week I had the luxury of a weekend off, so I spent it in Heidelberg, Germany, visiting friends from Leicester.

Heidelberg in the winter is pretty cold so I took along a truckload of painkillers, expecting the weather to trigger a fresh new wave of agony. I was extremely relieved that nothing kicked off, and also quite proud that I managed to climb to the top of Heiligenberg - a mountain which boarders the town. Wheelchair to mountain in 12 months isn't bad :)

As for work: it's going better than I expected it to, I'd been told, numerous times by numerous people, that I'd go home and cry after the end of each shift for the first 6 months, and after that I might see an improvement. I've been working for 4 weeks now, and it's not so bad!

Although the support my Trust has given to ease the transition from 'student' to 'qualified' has been great, I've still found myself becoming a bit stressed - and that's starting to affect other areas of my life. I can't sleep as well as I did, I'm becoming quite prone to minor illnesses, and my days off are just spent sleeping. I feel very far away from the calm and happy person I was in Africa, and I struggle to believe it was only 4 months ago. Luckily Nottingham is a great city for sport: I've joined 2 gyms, a swimming pool, a rock climbing centre, and an (extremely casual) rowing team - and Abbie is always up for a pub session! I'm using travelling as my carrot: I'm off to Norway in January, and hatching plans for inter-railing in the summer. Even at my most stressed I still love my job, and couldn't imagine doing anything else. It's just a case of gaining more confidence, right?

Love Emily x

I've become a proper, grown-up, midwife!

Yesterday was my first ever day at work as a fully independent midwife. I was fairly nervous before I started given that I haven't done any midwifery since Ghana (although I still think what I saw was less 'midwifery' and more 'forcibly tearing babies out of vaginas'), but as soon as I started it all came back to me. Everyone I worked with was incredibly helpful and friendly, and I don't think it'll take long to settle in. I'm still loving living in Nottingham, and I can't believe the difference a year has made to my life. Grateful doesn't cover it.

Love Emily x

Graduation day

Last week I graduated from my training course, with a first class degree. This time last year I wanted to be able to walk across the stage by myself. That stopped being a challenge in February, so I upped the difficulty and aimed for doing it whilst wearing high heels. I managed it, even if they were sturdy and sensible, with a strap so I could keep them on.

For the seriously interested, you can watch the ceremony here - although I recommend saving an hour of your life and skipping to 35 minutes in!

Life is going really well in the Midlands. My house is great fun, if not what my mum expected. It's sort of a cross between Fresh Meat and Men Behaving Badly, but when living with 4 blokes gets a bit grating Abbie is always up for a drink - so I can't complain at all! I start my 'induction' stuff this week at Queens, and I'm sure once they've taught me to manually handle fires safely I'll remember how to be a midwife. That's the plan.

Love Emily x