Mr A is my hero

You may be aware from various hints I have dropped that I'm not enjoying this placement very much. I don't want to say too much because a) it's boring and unpleasant to read about someone else's misery and b) I would have to describe the behaviour of various people in a negative way, which I'm not prepared to do. It's also very difficult to write about what I'm doing, because I'm extremely wary of including anything that might identify a patient.

In general then, last week the three of us students were engaged in Peer Assisted Learning, which means that in pairs, we were given a couple of patients to go and see, and we did the job together. Compared with some of the other weeks I've lived through, it really wasn't bad. This week we are in Consolidation, which means that we are given patients to see independently, reporting back to the supervising dietitians at the end of the day. This is actually going very well so far, although as ever, I'm prepared for everything to fall apart at a moment's notice. Hope for the best and expect the worst, that's me.

The weekend, however, was wonderful. Not because of the spring-like weather, which I didn't see much of because of having to work on my case study, but because of Mr A. He not only cooked wonderful food for us, toiled in the garden chopping out loads of plants that had been killed by the harsh winter, took the resulting bags of garden waste to the tip, gave me hugs on demand and listened to the endless tales of indescribable cruelty I've endured, but also took me out on Sunday to a lovely pub restaurant and suggested a very modest meal to share so I didn't eat the enormous dinner that I was inclined to choose. He also emailed me links to amusing videos of monkeys. He is wonderful, and I'm very lucky to have him.