Well today I had a lovely surprise when I arrived at work. The ward was closed as we had got several cases of Norovirus. …I had only been in on Saturday and there was no sign of anyone having it then, but it seems to be one of those illness that comes out of nowhere, causes a huge impact, then slinks off again!…

Norovirus is pretty unpleasant, unless of course you are rather partial to partaking in a bit of projectile vomiting, whilst trying to control the diarrhoea that is waiting to explode from the other end! Yes  it is rather nasty, and I wished that I could just turn around and go back home as I knew that we were all going to be in for a busy day….

As I actually walked in through the doors, the unmistakable stench hit my nostrils (just as my sense of smell is returning after giving up the cigs) and there it stayed all day; there was no getting used to it (which normally happens after a while), or even getting away from it;  every single bay had  patients who was suffering with it, and there were two in mine).

The fact that the ward was  closed, meant that no patients would be admitted or discharged, although visitors could still come if they wished to (or were crazy enough to). All staff were even more vigilant than usual and everyone was sporting a bright yellow pinny and gloves, regardless of what job role they had, or which patient they were seeing.

Having said that, the Manager, had previously arranged for a couple of workmen to come onto the ward today and put up some bits and pieces on the wall. They dutifully turned up and started working on their jobs, but I noticed they started looking a bit nervous as they saw people walking about all gowned up. Although these two did not have any direct patient contact I noticed them manically scrubbing and gelling their hands (which is no bad thing anyway), and they got out of our ward in record time!!

The rest of us ran around all day dishing out bedpans and commodes as fast as we could to keep up with demand, as our poor patients continued to suffer.  Funnily enough, the large tin of luxury chocolate biscuits that had been given to the staff as a gift from a relative, were still in the handover room, largely untouched ; nobody seemed to fancy them (this is unheard of, where I work; normally, even if the nurses haven’t managed to get to the goodies, the doctors, physios etc would have polished them off)!! It seemed that most of us had lost our appetites!