A slice of Lime

I haven’t got any images to show but my head is full of them.

Yesterday I did my first session of shadowing on the Gynaecology ward. My first exposure was the early shift. The patients come in from 7.30, and by the time I arrived at 7.45, all my nurse’s patients were admitted and in beds waiting for their operations.

I was shadowing C, a young nurse, only 6 months out of college. She said she found women’s health fascinating and this was the job she had always wanted. She had two patients waiting for gynaecological operations, and two for terminations and I was able to follow her as she did observations and went through checklists with the patients to ensure that the correct information is recorded about existing health issues and current procedure. With the termination patients, she also has to ask if they are sure about their decision.

Both C’s termination patients were having a surgical procedure, but other women on the ward had opted for a medical procedure, where they are given medication that brings on a miscarriage. They are given private rooms while the others are in 4-bed bays.

The paperwork is a mixed blessing. It guards against mistakes, but then it becomes the focus and leaves little time for the nurses to talk to the patients. This was particularly clear with a young termination patient, who said she was sure she wanted the procedure. But shortly afterwards, she left the ward in tears saying she needed some fresh air, and didn’t return. Her doubts weren’t evident in the interview and C was quite shocked.

There is also little time to spend with patients having operations. The ward is treating women with problems in the most intimate and private parts of their body, and a gynaecological procedure touches much more than the physical. It is inevitable that nurses have to be businesslike and practical, and I’m not faulting them for their commitment and professionalism. They are very caring, but there is not much space for it to be expressed.

The remaining termination case was still in theatre when I left, after having been bumped from the morning list because of a longer than expected procedure, much to her distress. Today I’m back on the ward, following the afternoon shift, where the focus is on discharging the morning’s surgery cases, and dealing with out of hours emergencies.

Deep breath …

Sick leave followed by holiday postponed my first meeting with C, the Modern Matron of the Gynaecology ward, but it finally happened yesterday. I was a bit nervous, not quite knowing what she was expecting or whether she would understand my sort of art. Brian at Lime said he had just mentioned me to her, so that wasn’t much help! In the end I decided to just meet her as human being, not a potential commissioner.

When I arrived, C was busy so I hovered in the doorway, not sure whether to go into her office, but once she was finished, her welcome was warm and friendly. She remembered that I was interested in miscarriage and still birth so I told her a bit about my work, and then asked about hers.

C is in charge of two gynaecology wards which cover issues around the first 20 weeks of pregnancy, as well as gynaecological diseases. After 20 weeks, pregnant women move on to obstetrics, which looks after them up to the birth. On the gynaecology ward they deal with terminations, miscarriage and fertility problems. What a potent mixture! The women are all treated in the same ward, and I asked if that is ever a problem. She said no, that the women keep to themselves and are usually in and out before they can form connections with each other.

I was interested in what C said about the staff’s experience. They may be dealing with a termination one minute and a miscarriage the next. This can be very emotionally draining, and the staff’s individual experience can add to the mix.

I told C that my work is not usually the sort of thing you can hang on a wall, and that I work a lot with feelings and emotion. I was able to tell her about my background in counselling. She seemed open to me spending some time on the wards, and seeing what happens. I’ve asked for a few days shadowing staff, to get a sense of what goes on there, maybe followed by some one to one conversations, and that’s already been ok’d by her boss.

I thought about putting off the shadowing for a while, since I have the Flood installation and Flood Walk this week, and Tern Collective are in the middle of proposals, but the sooner I get started, the less time I’ll have to worry about it, so I’ve offered a couple of days next week!

‘Flood’ is almost ready to go now. The knitted piece that will clad the tree was supposed to be ready for a test installation today, but the bank holiday weekend and a problem with the knitting machine mean that Jane hasn’t been able to finish it. We’ve rescheduled for Thursday. It is a shame we weren’t able to do it today, the bright sunshine would have been great for photographs. I might take some of the samples down to the site this afternoon and get a few detail shots. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this good weather continues for the rest of the week. Once the piece is installed we run the risk of it being vandalised, so it may not survive long enough for us to get good images on a sunny day.

The flood map now has two design choices, and we just need to get together and make the final decision. Making the map won’t take long – I have everything ready and will do colour photocopies to hand out to people who come on the flood walk.

In the meantime, my longer term collaboration with Jacqueline Wylie and Jude Macpherson is getting exciting. We got a rejection this week for our last proposal and should have been disappointed, but we weren’t. We’d already wavered about whether the proposal had been made to the right venue, so there was a bit of relief.

Our last meeting was full of energy. We started planning a new project, called ‘Manchester Time Piece’ and have a couple of applications underway to develop it. It already has it’s own twitter feed @McrTimePiece, and there will be a blog.

As for Lime-related work, I have a meeting next week with someone from Manchester Royal Infirmary to explore some ideas. I’m not sure how to approach the meeting. The contact came via Brian, Lime’s director. I might have a chance to speak to him before the meeting, but that depends on his diary.

I was back at Rogue Studios last week for an opening and put my head through the door of my studio there. I miss it, but it is impractical to try and work in both places, so will grit my teeth and get back to Lime.