You may remember that a couple of weeks ago I conducted a poll for Writing 101, which asked what type of blog posts you would prefer me to write. Here are the results:

1. Posts about things going wrong  13 votes
2. Posts about my family                 11 votes
3. Something else of your choosing  3 votes
4. Other                                             3 votes.

I am happy that you have chosen when things go wrong as your winner, as being clumsy, normally gives me a blog post or two to write about.  So, for Writing 101 ‘Take a cue from your readers’ post today, I thought I would share this story with you, that happened at work today.

The morning at work had been pretty busy as was normal, and of course, staff were thin on the ground as is also normal. I had decided to try to get some notes done after lunch, as I was due to go home in just over an hour, and I wanted to leave my colleague as little as possible to do. (Most of the staff on the ward prefer the 12 1/2 hour shifts, but I like the ‘short’ 7 1/2 hour ones).

I had even managed to make a coffee and was sitting at the table in the handover room, where there was a student and a Sister who was signing off some competencies for her.

Suddenly though, there was a commotion outside the room. A new patient that had arrived on the ward just previously was getting rather agitated and was threatening to whack a male nurse with his wooden walking stick! A female care assistant was trying to calm him down but he was swinging the stick around his head trying to lash out at whoever came near him.

The male nurse managed to get past him and into the room where I was writing the notes. Suddenly a stick came through the door and a loud THWACK sounded as he clouted the counter top just missing some of the cups that were there. Myself and the Sister jumped up and tied to get the stick off of him. We did manage to grab it but he was kicking at us and had more strength than we bargained for. We got the stick off of him and avoided the punches that he was dishing out (although the Sister got licked a couple of times) and I rushed to call security.

I went back into the room, as the patient was now sat down and chatting with the Care Assistant. Going to grab a much-needed swig of coffee, I hamfistedly ended up knocking the large mug of undrunk coffee all over the table. It went everywhere. The student’s notes were soaked through, as was everything else on the table, including the tortilla chips that a relative had brought in for us! Ooops, another day in paradise!