Monday 28 April 2014

Planning My Electives

It is certainly a busy time with my degree at the moment.  Assignments due in five weeks, end of year exams, clinical placement and a proposal to submit for my dissertation.  Am I really heading in to my final year? Stress levels are high but there is a lighter side to thinking about the final year, I can plan my electives.  Towards the end of our final semester we get to spend two weeks visiting other hospitals, seeing treatment techniques our placement hospitals might not use.  I am actually finding this as a welcome distraction from the current workload.

Helping people has always been at the heart of my choice to retrain. So using my elective time to understand the journey of my patients a little better, seems perfect.  Spending time with a research team, visiting a Teenage Cancer Trust ward, shadowing MacMillan nurses in the community are all on my elective wishlist.  Obviously I also want to see Cyberknife in action and other advanced techniques.  But this is probably the only time I will truly get to step away from the clinical department and get to understand the wider aspect of cancer care. So fingers crossed I can make the best use of my elective fornight.

Are you retraining in the health professions and planning your electives too? Do you have an elective dream list?

Until next time, take care.
Zoe
xo


Sunday 27 April 2014

Growing Into Our Home

I know people tend to say that you need to grow into your house, before making it a real home.  Well we have certainly done this.  Having moved here three and half years ago, we whizzed through, making quick updates to a very tired old decor, replaced the kitchen and had central heating fitted.  Then we stopped, not quite sure what to do next.  Slowly we have changed different pieces of furniture to better fit this house, made plans for different rooms.  But in the past couple of weeks, perhaps as a distraction from my huge workload, Andy and I have been thinking hard about how to make our home work better for our family.  The children are getting older and over the next few years we will be waving them goodbye as they head off to uni and then to grown up lives of their own.  This is quite a scary thought, my babies are not little anymore.  
However this has had an impact on our decorating ideas, on how we plan to utilise the space we have.  Whilst I hate thinking about my little birdies leaving the nest it is also quite liberating to know we can choose furniture that doesn't have to be toddler friendly.  For years we have had a lovely leather sofa, partly brought due to the easy cleaning option, but now I find myself looking wistfully at fabric upholstered sofas and chairs when we visit the huge Next At Home store down the road in Martlesham.  

We know our plans will take a couple of years to come to fruition, time and money restrictions slowing us down.  But this also means we can indulge in the planning stage, so I am sure I will be adding plenty of inspiration to my Pinterest boards over the coming months!

Are you busily planning a revamp in your home, making small or dramatic changes? Exciting isn't it?

Until next time, take care,
Zoe
xo