another thing ticked off the list

that's me passed my 1st aid! whoop whoop! that now means that a) my insurance will be valid, and b) if something were to happen to you in one of my classes then you now stand a slightly higher chance of making it out alive

soft tissue damage and fractures this morning, lots of gory pictures and videos of bones snapping... even i cringed! let me deal with the injury once it's happened... but good god i don't wanna see it happen!!

i got well and truely tied up today - i was the 'lucky one' who ended up being the casualty in the deomstration of an open fracture and needed to have my legs splinted together, it was bloody uncomfortable even with both legs intact - i can't even imagine how painful it would be to have that done to you with one of your bones snapped in half!

we had a wee practice session in CPR and recovery position again after lunch, nerves really started to kick in, i was actually sitting there shaking with nerves which is totally stupid coz i KNOW this stuff.

i was last to go for assessment - it was basic DRABC with a resus dummy and then recovery position on a fellow class member - turned out unless you do something that would make the situation worse you got passed - pretty much the same as the basic nursing skills, they don't expect you to be perfect but expect you to be able to demonstrate basic understanding and skills and recognise if you go wrong.

as it turned out I didn't go wrong once, did both perfectly! i think going last really helped, seeing everyone else pass and got a few hints and tips of what happened ie you need to talk the assessor through the steps of what you're doing and that it's not about speed, it's about getting it right, so just to take a deep breath and relax- it's not like there's really a life on the line!

the assessor even mentioned to me about the oppertunity of volunteering with St Andrews - so i take that as a good sign!

now i need to wait for my certificate to come through so i can send off for my insurance... hope it wont be too long, he said "your certificate will be with you in due course", which usually means that it has to process through a few people first.... great

first aid day 1

i was up at Hampden football ground today for the first day of my sports injuries first aid.

i got lost getting there, but then that's why i always leave an extra half hour early, coz i can pretty much guarantee you i'll get lost at some point in any new trip (despite having a satnav! lol)

i dunno what i was expecting, but the place is stunning! i mean 'me feeling totally out of place by how posh and expensive looking the whole place is' stunning!

we were up on the 6th floor, very posh meeting rooms and offices.

there's only 10 of us on the course, wide range of professions, some like me needing it for insurance purposes, others just there to gain knowledge for their own benefit.

we started with some theory and some group work - then onto the practical stuff of CPR. i was pretty confident in my CPR skills but just couldn't get the chest to inflate, neither could my partner - we're both quite worried at this point that we just can't get it, assessor then came along and tried and also couldn't get it to inflate- so took the whole thing apart and put it back together again and it worked a treat, phew! faith in my abilities was restored! lol

we then moved on to "head to toe" assessment -which basically entails getting very familiar with someone you only met 2 hours previously- this course certainly isn't for people who are shy about touching or being touched!! have to say it didn't bother me in the slightest, i can put my professional head on and just get on with it, but for others... they were a bit more hesitant and i can totally understand why.

we then did recovery position - that's something that's changed slightly since i last did it, we also did recovery position for someone with a spinal injury, which is a task and a half and something which is really hard to get right.

choking was next, got to wear a funky vest and give (and recieve!) back slaps and abdominal thrusts.

wounds was good fun - lots of gory pictures - and we got to play about with bandages (cue the jokes about being tied up!) - it was really interesting to learn the new techniques and how to improvise when you are limited to a first aid kit.

it was also really interesting to learn what you can and can't do as a first aider, some of it is completely backwards... but then that's UK legislation in general really.. there's always that one rule where you think "why?!"

obviously there was more to the day than this, a lot of theory, about 20 pages of notes taken, but those were the highlights.

looking forward to tomorrow, i think we're gonna cover breaks and soft tissue damage - we're also getting formally assessed in CPR and recovery position.... we do get assessed in all the other aspects, but those are informal and take place while we're doing the practicals, as long as your technique isn't horribly wrong you pass, whereas with CPR and recovery position there's a bit more at stake and so they want to make sure you can achieve a certain level independantly before passing you.

have to say I am really glad i chose to go on this course now, i have really really enjoyed it so far and already feel loads more confident about being able to cope should anything go wrong in a class.

bring on tomorrow!!

I am car-less!

ok so after the car played about yesterday i was anticipating it maybe giving me a bit of problem today.

what i was not expecting was for the damn thing to refuse to start!! turn the key and it chuggs and couple of times then dies.

i am absolutely beyond fed up with this car - we've had it about 7ish months and it's just been one problem after the other, it's cost us an arm and a leg in repairs just these past 3 months alone!

it's a fab wee car to drive, i love having power steering, i love having a fan with more functioning settings than 'off' or 'on full blast', i love having a heater that doesn't take half an hour to heat up, I love being able to go from 0-60 in seconds rather than minutes...

but I miss my micra, I miss the reliability, I miss being confident in parking, i miss wing mirrors that aren't those daft magnifying things, i miss being able to see to the end of the bonnet, i miss things rarely ever going wrong with it and when stuff did go wrong it was cheap to repair - 10 years we've had the micra and it's probably cost us less in repairs in all that time than what the modus has cost us in 7 months!

of course i only discovered the car refusing the start as I was packing Caelan in to take him to school... so we had to foot it- which is somethig i really wasn't enthralled with considering the hurt from toning on weds is starting to kick in...

i was also planning on going into town today to take my phone in for repair (touchscreen not working) and to pick up some joggies for this weekend and some more smartish tops for starting placement next week, i was even considering going to the lunchtime Zumba class... but without a car there'd be no way i'd get back in time. plus Caelan wanted school dinner today but I could only find enough money for D and K so I had to give D my last remaining fiver and give C D's coins.

i was really planning on a relatively chilled day today.... best laid plans, eh?

I am away most of this weekend, I'm up at Hampden Park for sports injuries first aid training.

that's another thing which has annoyed me lately... i am a 2nd year student nurse and to have got past 1st year i needed to show competence in CPR etc for the NMC to allow me to progress to 2nd year... but when it comes to insurance for Zumba, it means nothing - i need an actual 1st aid certificate - and while I do actually have an emergency 1st aid, it runs out in about 2 weeks.

so i figured if i *have* to do a 1st aid course (insurance companies don't specify which, but all the courses cover basic life support), I may as well do one where I'll learn something new - and since the sports injuries course was only £6 more than the emergency course, i figured, why not? learn more about the things I'll be of more chance to encounter- bone and soft tissue damage, rather than burns, scalds, poisioning etc

it's a 2 day course (12hrs in total, vs only 4hrs for the emergency course) so it's gonna be a long weekend, but it should be interesting... i hope!

and of course after this i'm gonna have to get a first aid kit to take to classes.... gosh so much to think about...

pretty cheesed off today...

today started off quite well, i woke not feeling too sore after zumba toning last night, I'd had a reasonable sleep (as reasonable as you can get for 5hrs) so i felt semi-refreshed, Caelan wasn't too much of a hassle this morning, got to uni with minimal traffic...

today we were meant to be in 9:30-4, so Caelan got booked into creche for both before and afterschool care. we started at 9:30 with the tutor who will be taking us next semester and then our present tutor came, classmates asked how long the day would run as our timetable just said preparation for practice - which usually means our placement documents get handed out, which obviously shouldn't take an entire day, he said we'd be done by lunchtime- 1pm absolute latest!

now I know this must seem like a good thing to most people, getting an unexpected early finish - but we are now paying out for childcare we don't need! and childcare aint cheap!!
i have to give the creche 7 days notice to cancel his place and this has happened SO many times now, where we were meant to be in a full day but he only kept us in half (and by the tone of it, he never intended on keeping us to the end in the first place), where it's been decided with a day's notice that the next day would be done online...

tutor ended up getting quite wound up with us this morning in reflection of our last PBL, which we presented yesterday. it was a poster presentation, never been done before by us or any other group so we all agreed we'd give it a go. we'd be mixed groups between campus and highlander students, so it would be all web based communication etc etc etc

well... he made it quite clear what he had expected us to do and what we thought we were meant to do were 2 completely different things- though even after his hour long rant I am still really none the wiser as to what it was exactly he'd been expecting out of it. TBH I started getting vey fed up by about 20mins in and really had to hold myself back from just telling him to take a chill pill and walking out.

on the way home the M77 was horrifically busy - i have no idea what the hold up was but usually lunch time on a weekday it's pretty quiet, even going INTO glasgow let alone going out!

then got onto the A76 and got stuck behind one of those HUGE quarry dumper trucks on a flat bed truck going at max 14mph, tho coz it's quite hilly a lot of the time we were crawling along at a snail's pace. i swear for most of it i could probably have walked faster! and of course it was only once i had passed the last option turn-off of an alternative route that i got stuck in it.

1hr30mins into the journey home, a trip that usually during the day takes me 50mins, i was only in Mauchline. we must have sat there for nearly 10mins while the police made sure the roads were clear for the truck to get through. thankfully once we got out the other side of mauchline i was then able to nip down one of the country roads out into the back of Catrine and into Auchinleck (there were quite a few police cars at the academy today, after the air-rifle shottings yesterday) otherwise i think i'd still be stuck behind the thing now! and of course because of our unexpected half day I didn't have lunch - so I was sitting in the car starving (i don't eat brekkie)

nipped into tesco on the way home, parked and the car felt slightly funny as i was turning it off but didn't think much of it.... until i set back for home and parked in our drive - turned the key to turn the car off - nothing, car engine still going... "hum" i think "maybe i've not turned it all the way" so turned it again with the same result. took the key OUT of the ignition - car continued to run! ended up deliberately having to stall it to get it to shut off!

stoopid technology....

Zumba GOLD!

wow - what an eventful few days!

as I write this I am at my parents house in London, and the reason I am back in London can be explained with just 1 word - ZUMBA!

yesterday I qualifed as a Zumba Gold instructor!

I travelled down to London on friday after picking Caelan up from school, the journey was pretty un-eventful... apart from taking the wrong slip road about half way down and not realising until about 25 miles down the road that nothing looked at all familiar - it also added about an hour to the journey - but after my SatNav throwing some tantrums at me I eventually got back onto the right road and we arrived at just before midnight, so we still made reasonable time.

Saturday I didn't do much apart from chat to mum... just a normal lazy saturday... well, up until about 11pm anyway

I'd been in bed trying to get to sleep for about an hour, I turned over and felt this almighty pain shoot through my hip, through my glute and down into my left thigh.

I just couldn't believe it, I've had minimal issues with my hip injury for probably the best part of 10 years and the night before my training course it decides that that is the right time to throw a tantrum at me! I've been doing Zumba multiple times a week for 10 months now and never had an issue, but rolling over in bed was enough to make it go!!

I guess one plus side was that it was Gold training, the whole point of Gold is that's all about modifications for people with mobility issues etc - if it had been the high energy B2 I really am not sure if I'd have survived the day.

thankfully because I've had this issue with my hip since i was 15 I am quite aware of my limitations, so apart from it just being sore in general it really didn't hamper me too much.

the training was amazingly good fun, our ZES, Sirin, is a typical ZES - completely bonkers!! we had a blast and ended up with quite a few running jokes throughout the day. it was also quite an emotional day, there's so much more to the psychology and physiology of why we do Gold than you would ever think.

I met loads of wonderful instructors, swapped contact details with a few too- my Zumba family is ever expanding!

so got back to my parents last night still buzzing from the day, and as i was getting changed for bed I bent over to pick my clothes off the floor and I managed to pull a muscle in my other leg! yes I am actually falling apart! but fortunately because it's just a pulled muscle I can do stuff to ease the pain, whereas with my bursitis there is not really much I can do - though fortunately it is already feeling a lot better. climbing stairs is the only thing that I am really having any issue with, dad is enjoying making quips about needing to get me a stair lift... cheers dad.

we drive back up to scotland tomorrow - as long as I don't have to climb any stairs I'll be fine!

Zumba Toning!

well I thought considering I wrote a post to describe my first Zumba class, i'd also write one about my first Toning class.

it's quite hard to explain really, in some ways it's quite similar to standard Zumba, but in others it's very different.

the basic steps are the same, but you use weights (zumba toning sticks - think dumb-bells crossed with maracas!) within the routines and the routines are specifically geared towards toning rather than fat burning, so the tracks are slightly slower paced.

I haven't been to a class in over 3 weeks, I've not even had chance to break out my DVDs or the xbox game - first Caelan was ill, then I was ill and then i had to spend a week and a half catching up on all the uni work i'd missed being ill... it's quite annoying considering i did so well over x-mas and new year, ate well, kept active etc etc

anyway- needless to say I wasn't on top form... ha, that's putting it lightly - i haven't felt so uncoordinated in a LONG time, and at some points i really did start to struggle.

there is a brilliant atmosphere in the class (maybe it's to do with the fact that the class is just solely the hardcore Zumba nutjobs?!) there always is anyway, but again, in the toning class it's the same but different to the standard Zumba class. it's hard to describe, you just have to be there to feel it I guess.

the class is a straight through, very quick stops for water but that's it - it's a pretty intense class and I can really see now why Lyna wants us to have been attending for a good few months before going on toning... of course knowing the basic steps doesn't make you immune from suffering from occasion bouts of "2-left-feet-itis" - like I did last night! it's a good job i know how to laugh at myself....

class finished and I was sore, tired and sweaty but i was buzzing!

by the time i got home my arms were pretty sore and my legs had turned to jelly which made getting up and down the stairs fun, I didn't sleep too great, I generally ached all over. in hindsight i should have taken some paracetamol... or a glass or 2 of wine!!

this morning my legs hurt - hell who am I kidding I hurt all over, but it was my legs that felt it the most - i still just fall to sitting coz my hamstrings are just SO sore and one of my university friends, Mary, took great delight in my pain today in class! but tonight, it's my glutes that are feeling it - yesterday I wouldn't have said there was anything specifically in the routines that worked the glutes, but evidently there was... it's quite weird thought how there's such a delayed reaction.

not that i am complaining (Well I am, coz it's bloody sore, but you know what I mean!) - not like my glutes couldn't use a little working... and they say "no pain, no gain"... well I hope 'they' are right - coz I'd hate to think I'm putting myself through this for nothing! lol

all in all, i loved it! i can't wait for my next class, and the fact I'm coming up from London especially in time to be able attend should speak volumes!