Better to have loved and lost?

Things are going well on the ward at the moment. This is mainly because for the first time in months we are fully staffed. It’s great. Today I was able to see all my patients, spend a reasonable amount of time with them, get all the test organised, see the results and act on them, and I was still finished by half past four! It’s fantastic and I’m definitely going to enjoy it while it lasts.

My evening out with Gemma the physio at the weekend was really good fun too. I already knew that she was sweet and really fit and, over the course of the night, I found out that she’s a really funny, bright, likeable young lady basically, I think she has “the package.”

If you’re thinking there’s going to be a “but” you’d be right. Here it comes.

Gemma’s great and I think she quite likes me too but I think if anything is going to happen between us, it’ll be the Big Romance. You know, flowers on the doorstep, dinner with fairy lights, cuddles on the sofa, walks by the river, that kind of thing. Ordinarily, I’d be dead keen because, even though we’ve only be out the once, I can really see myself falling for her. The problem is, the MTAS applications process means I don’t know where abouts in the country I’m going to be living and working come the summertime. I’m worried that if we start something now, we might not be able to carry it on. And if that’s the case, is there any point in starting it?

On the 8th of June I find out two pieces of information that will be crucial to my life. Firstly whether or not I’ll be employed, and secondly, whereabouts in the country said job will be. Come the 8th of June, I could find out that I’ve got the job I want and will be able to stay close by. Or I could find out that I have to move hundreds of miles away from here… hundreds of miles away from her.

Is there any point in starting something when I know there’s a good chance we’ll have to end it in five week’s time? I don’t know. The cliché says that it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but the thing is - I HAVE loved and lost in the past and it hurts… a lot. And I don’t think that cliché is true.

So what am I supposed to do? I don’t know.

In the meantime, last week brought two more huge fuckups from the people at the MMC/MTAS who are in charge of our careers. Have a look. The mind boggles. The people running the online application process don’t seem to have grasped one of the FUNDAMENTAL truths about the internet. Once information is out, there’s no way to get it back again and EVERYONE who is interested can get hold of it. Every schoolchild knows this. Paris Hilton knows this. The people running MTAS really should have known this.