On coming out.

You'd want to have been living under a rock not to know that Gareth Thomas, a prominent Welsh rugby player, has recently come out as a gay man, after splitting up with his wife and subsequently letting his fellow players in on the secret he had kept to himself for over 15 years. I first came across the article in the Mail Online (someone else had linked to it, you must understand, and I was curious) and of course the overall tone of the piece was a touch on the overwrought side. Sometimes I almost feel like rolling my eyes: Thomas is quite close in age to me, yet he only recently went through a process that I - and the average gay men of my age - went through the same 15 years ago. He faced his sexuality for the first time at the age of 17 and he denied it. Now, after buckling under the inevitable psychological pressure, he's decided to accept it. What does he want, a medal?

Of course it's never that simple, and it's got me thinking about the whole coming out process. Thomas's statement that he wanted to prove himself as a player first is perhaps fair enough, and there may be some truth in the statement that he would never have made to the highest echelons of rugby if he had come out at the start of his career. Still, there exists the assertion in the essay On Coming Out, a sub-section of the pamphlet With Downcast Gays, that 'posing as heterosexual and thus identifying with a group comprised at least in part of oppressors of gay men, he was a traitor to the gay cause'. It's an assertion that is certainly applicable in many circumstances, the question is, is this application universal? Is it applicable here?

Yes and no, I think. In spite of the macho culture surrounding rugby, it still is made up of predominantly middle-class men who happen to have had a smattering of education in their youth before turning pro in adulthood. I find it hard to believe that if he had come out, say, ten years ago, it would have raised many eyebrows. It was the twenty-first century, for Christ's sake.

I can just about understand someone subsuming their sexuality for the sake of a career that they love very much. When he said he wanted to 'prove himself as a player first' however, you can read this to mean that he wanted to prove that he wasn't a supposedly weak man afraid of confrontation, as many gay men are (still, unbelievably) stereotyped to be. Being gay in rugby was probably never really the issue, being physically weak was. And it's highly likely that this denigrating stereotype was picked up by the players when they first started playing in secondary school. Can you imagine the coach at that time doing anything other than reinforcing it? When I was in school, our coach certainly didn't.

In an interview on the BBC website, he speaks of how he hopes that by coming out, being gay will be less of an issue for the next generation of rugby players. He'll most likely achieve something in this regard, but he would have achieved more if he had come out earlier, when his career was at his peak, when he had by then proved himself, but when he still had substantial achievements ahead of him. But then, he knows more about the rugby environment, the players and the fans, and that's what's interesting. Was his decision to stay in the closet based on his close-quarters observation of those around him? No-one makes any attempt to hide or apologise for the pervasive homophobia that exists in football, and that is a reflection on the vermin that are involved with that sport, from the managers and players, right through to the fans. In general, homophobia in rugby doesn't make headline news. Is it because the players, managers and fans are more enlightened, or are they just more discreet about it?

Interestingly, he makes the point about how understanding the gay community was in allowing him his closet, even after it was common knowledge in some circles there that he was gay. In the pamphlet I referenced previously, this is railed against, and deemed a form of self-sabotage for the gay community. Perhaps this is true, but I've never been comfortable with the shrieking glee with which certain gay men out closet cases. Unless of course, the latter are anti-gay in their public life.

I'm not going to judge. He's come out before it's too late for him to have a happy gay life, as it were, and the only person he ultimately has to answer to is his ex-wife. And while his visibility would have been crucial to the gay cause once upon a less-enlightened time, it is not so much now. Except, it would appear, to the cause of gay rugby players. And he's not altogether bad in the attractiveness stakes. Like one of these people who get better with age...

I can't imagine the world of football/soccer ever being this accepting, though. I think that would be too much of a leap for their mankind. But with such a bunch of ugly skinny things, who cares?

I'm baaack!

After a rocky couple of months locuming in London, I've landed a permanent job in Three Bridges, a thirty minute train ride from Clapham Junction. So, not unsurprisingly, I'll be moving to that area to minimise the morning commute. My experience of London's gay communities has been going according to plan, it has to be said. First I land a place on a direct tube line to Soho, and now I'm moving to South London, not far from Vauxhall. Yay!

The job I'm starting, in a month, looks like it'll be good experience and will pay well, though I'm anticipating a challenge to say the least of it, as I won't have a dispenser.

I've taken the password off this thing, as I've left Barts now and am not really conscious of what people will think.

In other news, I recently happened across the website of a personal trainer who operates near Liverpool Street, a chap called Nick Mitchell, whose website can be found here. I was impressed, as the sites of most personal trainers are poorly designed in general, and don't always back themselves up with established scientific evidence. This one was different. A solid website, with lots of reference to clinical journals, and with assertions that resonated quite substantially for me.

So, an appointment was made, and I got to meet the man himself. I was told I would be pushed beyond my limits, in spite of bleating and moaning, and would inspire questions from my friends along the lines of 'Fucking hell, Denis. What have you been doing?'. I was impressed.

Unfortunately, the price tag for the 12-week 'Muscle Up' package was similarly substantial, and as I'm in a bit of a financial hole at the moment, it's going to be a while before I can do it. But I will do it. After just a couple of comments from me about my lifestyle, he told me I was insulin resistant. I looked this up, and the list of symptoms described my problem down to a tee. I was sold.

Other that that, life goes on as usual. Had a few drinks last Saturday, brought a hot musclecub back to mine, and spent most of Sunday trying to shake off a hangover. Recently, I've been told by more that one person that whenever I'm out I always seem to be drunk. Lies, damned lies!

Denis Ryan, MRPharmS.

I finished up with Barts and the London NHS trust about a month ago today. I got signed off by my tutor, passed my registration exam, and recently received my registration certificate in the post. So now that I'm a fully-fledged member of the profession, what are my thoughts on it?

I don't know.

It's been a challenging year. For at least the first half of it I felt overwhelmed by everything I had to learn, and only started to find my feet after Christmas. The amount of information I had to assimilate was pretty vast, and I always felt like I was playing catch-up. I didn't particularly mind this, I knew the learning curve I had to put up with is a feature of hospital pharmacy, and I certainly learned more there than I would have done if I was in a shop for a whole year. At the start of the year, I was as nervous as hell approaching patients, and it took me 20 minutes to extract the required information from them. Dealing with people when they're in that position of vulnerability takes some getting used to. Towards the end of the year though, I was pretty much dealing with upto 8 patients in two hours, and confidently getting all information I needed from them, with the minimum of support. I also got used to the ins and outs of a hospital dispensary, which is more than a bit different to a community one. I've also got some recognition for a project that I did while at the hospital, being asked to display a poster at regional level, and also won a prize for a presentation I gave with a colleague. All in all, I've overcome a few barriers and got some props. So where to from here?

See above. Returning to hospital as a qualified pharmacist would mean working towards getting a clinical diploma over the next three years. Not a problem, if it was what I genuinely wanted, but while I've managed to make a decent fist of hospital pharmacy over the last year, I'm still dubious about committing to it in the long run. I'm still not at home on the wards, and my tutor for the year picked up on this: We're both pretty much agreed on the fact that it's the technical side of things that I'm suited to. My main motivation for doing a hospital pre-reg was for the learning. I hadn't much of a clue about the clinical side of things, and I felt that whatever I ended up doing, I should start out by learning about this first. The jury remains out on whether I'll return to it, though.

So. On I go. I'd like to take some time out from it all, but I need to keep the money coming in if I want to stay in London. I've already spent some time locuming at a pharmacy at Gatwick airport, and that was a bit busy to say the least of it, but it seems to have passed off without incident. All I have to do now is find some more work, and SOON. Of course, corporations the world over are using the current economic climate as an excuse to lay off staff left right and centre, and drug companies are no exception, which is a pain, as I'm thinking of making inroads there. Well, it's either that, or just coast along in community for a while.

After our registration exam a while back, we all met up, and were discussing where we are going to go from here. I was relieved to hear that at least one other person was feeling that while he liked the course at uni, he wasn't too much into working as a pharmacist, and was thinking of returning to teach it instead. If there's one thing I liked doing this year, it was organising and presenting information and learning things from the 'ground up'. Hopefully I'll find an outlet for this in the future.

Other than that, London is cool, and I'm planning on hanging on here for a while. The only current fly in the ointment is that I have to find somewhere else to live soon. I've resisted the urge to move to the gay triangle of Vauxhall/Kennington/Oval. Somewhere west, like Ealing, maybe.

Where I find time for another entry...

It's hard to believe that this coming week will mark the halfway point of my year's contract in my job with the trust I'm currently working in. So, what are my thoughts?

- Working full time sucks, unless you are blindly in love with your job. I haven't got around to half the things I'd planned to do in London since I moved here, so I'm going to have to make a list and vow to try and achieve one of each of the things on it every weekend.

- I'm currently working in a hospital that is right across the road from where I live. The convenience of this is immeasureable, though I haven't yet (surprise!) got around to doing all the early morning fitness stuff that I swore I would do now that I have an extra two hours in the day to play with. Having said that, it rocks to be able to stay in bed until 8am and still have time for breakfast, a shower and brushing my teeth.

- British Military Fitness is going well, and I had a fitness assessment recently, which highlighted my 'inner core strength'. I still need to work on my running though, and I'm still a bit rubbish at doing press-ups for any length of time. Still, I'm almost ready to move up to the intermediate level of the class. The battle for a six-pack continues, though. In one corner: the fitness instructor who makes us run until we're almost dead. In the other corner: my predeliction for cream-filled chocolate choux buns.

- While nothing beats a good night out with cool people and lots of alcohol, the next day is always a waste. Unfortunately the world is a much greyer place without the occasional vat of beer, and it may be better to resign one's self to this rather than stay in and be miserable at weekends. London was made for going out in, after all.

- Having taken lack of organisation to previously-unheard of heights at uni, I'm now having to seriously modify some deeply ingrained habits just to put down a reasonably productive and responsible week at work. We were given a mock state board exam a while back, and the results (for all of us, not just me) show that there is still quite a bit of gaps to be filled in my knowledge.

- I think I'll be trying something other than hospital pharmacy for a while after I finish here. To pay off my student loan, if nothing else. I wouldn't mind working for a drug company for a while, but most of them are located out in the sticks, and I want to stay in London for the immediate future. While some parts of hospital pharmacy are cool, I still don't know if I'd ever be any good at it in the long term, and the first three years in a hospital as a registered pharmacist are very general, and I'd have to work in areas that I've no interest in before I'd have a chance to specialise.

- The above mentioned, I'm still learning a lot. Most likey more than I would if I was in a retail outlet all year. At the moment I'm doing a rotation in a cardio-thoracic hospital, and while I always sucked at this when I was at uni, I'm now slowly getting my head around how all of it works. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be getting the chance to see some heart surgery, which should be pretty cool.

- I really don't like having to stick this blog behind a password, and I may well end up reversing this later on, but for the moment this is how it has to be. Another thing is that I don't really have much to write about right now: Brighton was such a voyage of discovery, but since I've moved up here, it's been all work and no play (though I may write about my recent first night at Stark Bollock Naked at The Hoist later on!).

- Does anyone know how to turn around and study after a day at work? Granted, where I am at the moment can be quiet, and there is occasionally a chance to get out the books, but come 5pm, my brain is a pile of mush, and then I have to turn around and learn about such things as guidelines on secondary prevention of heart failure and myocardial infarction.

Oh well. Onward ho. It can be gratifying to occasionally hear that all the other people I graduated with are going through occasional patches of feeling fed-up with having to get up early every morning and only getting two days off out of seven. At least I got to go home over Christmas, and see my family, and New Year's in London was really rather excellent.

I've taken off all of next week. Part of it is to try and catch up on what I have to learn (boo!) but I'm also going to take it easy and visit a few sights and do a few things I haven't gotten around to doing here thus far.

Next on the cards. Go and see Milk...