To keep a distance, that famous professional distance. At least I rarely meet the patients described in the manuscripts. Medical language is so dry and detached, there is no space for feelings.
This works most of the time. In research territory, patients are usually cases, subjects, probands, grouped into cohorts according to specific characteristics and so on. No need to even use the term human. I am not complaining.
But now and again, a case becomes a voice inside my head, my mind creates a person, I can see the hands gripping the wash basin, the shivering body inside the hospital gown, I am almost convinced I can feel the fear and now I have to watch out because before I know it, it becomes my own, my very own fear of death.
Sometimes, I do the sensible thing or at least I think it's sensible, the save and exit routine, what a blessing. Other times, I let the tsunami wash over me, gasping for air, bruised and shaken. I would make a terrible nurse.
That's exactly why I could never practice after my education.
ReplyDeleteI spent 30 years working in Child Protection, with books, reports, and papers to show for it. It's been a learning curve, from writing academically about the most terrible things people can do to children to getting closer to emotional experience and leaving all the abuse stuff behind.
ReplyDeleteOh Sabinchen, you have the brain and the power to work in some other field. This sounds like self-torture and then ' what do I know'.
ReplyDeleteOn second thought. I don't know what my syndrome is called but I tried nursing when I arrived in Canada. Assistant-nurse is all I could do because to be a nurse I would have had to do three years of courses in a pensionat. Impossible. I was needed at home by husband and child.
ReplyDeleteAssistant-nurse in outpatients
department was what I did well for a few months but the doctors and nurses never saw that I was crying along with the children that were spitting blood after a tonsil operation.
Thank you for your thoughts. There was a time not too long ago - and occasionally it reappears for longish stretches - when I was daring, seemingly invincible and ready and able for almost anything. And I can look back on quite some achivements and enjoyments. Fear of death? Nah, maybe of the tax inspector or a speed control camera.
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