I am having a busy week at work, and it is involving me doing lots of things with people from other organisations and with people who are what can only be described as the public. Yesterday I described an experience I had just had, and today there were more. A lady, who appeared not to know I was in the room spoke of having spent half an hour on the phone to ‘the PCT’ last week, and recounted some of what had been discussed. I knew that she was describing the conversation she had with me, but it was interesting to me that I was just an invisible thing to her and apparently represented an organisation that both commissions and delivers health care. We also had the opportunity to hear the real experiences of people who have had babies in the last few months. It is useful for us as commissioners and useful to the people who manage the midwives to hear both the positive and the negative. It was also interesting to note that the thing that interests the official patient and public user group (comprising mainly older people including the person described above) which is the place a baby is delivered was not the thing most vital to the new mums (the ante and post natal experience). I still have more of this stuff to come with a public meeting to go to on Saturday.

I am preoccupied by something this week. It is affecting my ability to concentrate at work, it is not affecting my ability to do my work but I am having to work hard to make myself appear to be my normal self. I feel kind of miserable, scared, nervous and many other things inside. It has affected my ability to sleep properly, it is affecting my appetite (not a bad thing) and it is making me snappy. I have spoken before about the financial problems that came to a head about 15 months or so ago and which I have been managing pretty well. However I am in danger of losing the plot because I have to do something about my car. I have a car on one of these ‘options’ deals. You pay for it monthly and the end of 3 years you give it back, or you keep it and pay up another £3000 or you part exchange it. I can’t just hand it back, because there would be a mileage penalty, I don’t have the money to buy it and I don’t know if I am credit worthy enough to part exchange it. However I am going to try the third option, and now I am just waiting to see what happens. To see if I can get the new car, and if I do how I will manage for a month having stumped up a deposit. I had forgotten how much money problems can cause you to feel stressed and constantly worried. I hate this feeling of being out of control and it brings home the fact that my financial situation is precariously balanced. Having said that I have paid a large amount off of my over all debt in the last 15 months and am still on track. So that is me, muddling through at work, feeling a little persecuted and yes kind of scared. However, on a positive note, at least I am thinking before I act, something I didn’t always do before and something that helped me get into that whole financial mess before.