March 2010

How could people do these things to each other. I promise right now that if it’s the last thing I do I’m going to strive for helping to make a change somehow. I swear to you mum that one day every nurse n this country will know my name.

I was disgusted. I was watching a panorama special whereby an elderly residential home had been infiltrated by use of a secret camera, and the footage was disgraceful. I felt sick to my stomach and angrier than ever at how this was allowed to go on in our society in the 21st century.

April 5th 2012

This was the date of my accident, the day everything changed in my life.

May 2nd 2013

Alas, this was to be the worse day of my life. In front of Viv Bennett and Jayne Cummings I was due to give out an award, and they were looking forward to meeting me. Instead, I became too ill and anxious so was unable to do so. I watched the other editors take the stand; each greeted with an ear shattering round of applause, and my name wasn’t even mentioned.

January 2015

My mother in law tragically passes away.

April 2015

My grandma passes away.

May 2015

My marriage ends.

December 2015

I’m attacked and the police are called. Allegations based on malicious and libellous allegations that I am an aggressive monster are made.

February 2016

Fitness to practice. My ability to be a nurse is called into question and a decision must be made.

I was so sure that I was going to keep my promise to nursing. I felt it in my blood. It’s what I was born for. Maybe I was wrong.

  

 

Monday 21st March 2016

Today has been a good day. I met with my friend; Emma, who I met when I first started university before Mexico back in 2011. It turns out that Emma works right next door to the ward I’m due to start my fourth placement on next month, along with a few other people I had initially started uni with back in 2011. Emma said:

“Ellie and Emily work on the ward. They came to me really excited one day and told me that you were coming to work with us, they’re all so excited and the whole ward loves you already!” she’d said, which I thought was very sweet. Then she added:

“Mikey, Everywhere I go people seem to know you. I asked some first year students if they knew you and they all said that they did! People on the ward know you, a few other staff members said they’d heard of you. How come everyone seems to know you??’

‘Blowed if I know. They’ve probably heard of me for all the wrong reasons!’ I joked.

After our catch up I headed to the gym. While I was there, my brain was making sense of everything that had happened during the day so far (this is one of the main reasons I go to the gym).  As I felt the excruciating burn after my fourth shoulder set,  it hit me like a freight train. Or a ton of bricks. Or a women who’s husband just called her fat. You get the idea.

Everything that’s happened to me has lead me to be here. It IS happening. People DO know who I am, and every event that’s occurred has enabled that.

I only revealed my true intentions around what I wanted to achieve in my nursing career publicly for the first time a few blogs back. I’m sure some of you might have been thinking that it was an OTT proclamation,  unrealistic or it was just me romanticising my situation. Well like every other aspect of my life…

…not a single gram of fuck shall be given to that. 

I have never said ‘why me? why is this happening to me?’ I’m not into that. I am so lucky to be mobile or even alive, able to move my body, eat, drink, toilet, there are far more people who aren’t so lucky after the severity of injury I had.

I need to do what I have to do not only for the patients I all over the country who deserve the best care, or for Reese, or my family who have stuck by me so much that I have been able to survive all this, but also for the people that haven’t been so fortunate. We can achieve more than our prognosis tells us. In hospital, I was told maybe considering another career might not be a good idea.

To that prognosis a single game of ‘fuck’ added along with the word ‘that’ WAS given. 

I can’t give up this fight for so many reasons. But today I realised that there are even more reasons why I can’t.