Published Authors

There are many better reasons for buying a a copy of, "Looking Towards the Dawn", St John's book of reflections for each day of Advent, than the fact that it contains the first published writings of Tim and Liz Carter.

These include:

1. Encouraging spiritual growth in what is often a pressured time leading up to Christmas.

2. Finding out a bit more about St John's and what we get up to here.

3. Profits from the sale of the book support the work of the college.

The fact that there's a small prize for the first comment on this blog correctly identifying one of the reflections written by one of us should also be almost irrelevant :-)

NHS Musings

The most important thing to remember in all this is that if we didn't live in country with universal, free at point of delivery, healthcare Liz would probably have died years ago. With a chronic condition such as hers, unless you are very rich you cannot afford the healthcare costs yourself and you are virtually uninsurable. We are very glad we are not in the US.

But, now entering rant mode:

Two different members of nursing staff who take notes on their hands in biro during your admission procedure.

SHO's who discuss starting a particular course of medication on a Friday, but don't write it up so the nurses can't start it till the Monday when the consultant does his rounds and looks more than a little peeved.

An SHO who inserts a canula without gloves on and proceeds to wipe up the blood he spilt making three attempts to get it in, with his fingers.

A policy that says if you have Cystic Fibrosis we will teach you to mix and administer your IV antibiotics at home because you are likely to be young with a family, but if you have Bronchiectisis we won't, even though it's the same meds, because you're likely to be older and without family commitments. So unless her consultant can persuade the pharmacy department to fit the policy to the person involved, looks Liz might be in for a fortnight.

end of rant, I'm going to bed.