Debrief

This was tapped out on my cellphone sitting in a restaurant at 6.3op.m. at night. Incredibly, I only ate for 20 minutes…and I spent the rest of the time sipping tea and tapping this out until 8p.m.

Gotta love solitude. Don’t think I’ll ever get tired of eating alone.

There is a certain pleasure in letting and letting the brain do absolutely nothing and think about nothing in particular.

I’m currently at a chinese restaurant somewhere in Palmy and I’m sitting here sipping a cup of good brewed chinese tea. They’ve not shooed me out so I guess I can sit here a bit longer.

Its a bit like debrief time. Let your brain go and just get in touch with whatever your day brought you. I really should do this on a regular basis. Who knows, it might keep me from losing my sanity that much quicker.

More often than not, my thinking moments consist of me face planted against the mattress or the pillow and just staring into the wall or something. Well, that’s what it looks like anyway. I’m actually solving the world peace problem.

+D Kidding.

I’m usually running thoughts through my head. They don’t usually get solved but I feel better about myself enough so that I can get up and take a shower, at least.

I think I’ve been a bit traumatised by my exposure to death lately. Considering the fact that my parents have never allowed me to touch lest even see a dead body, the sudden influx of people that I have talked to, treated, joked with, and discharged home that have suddenly decided to make their home 6 feet below sea level have kind of blown me away. Just a little.

Caramel, the social worker, mentioned to me that when she first started her job at the hospital, she would get rather teary whenever a patient of hers passed on. Now, she says that she’s a bit more resilient especially when that happens.

I just think that’s sad.

I think its sad that we can become emotionally immune to death just from overexposure.

I hope I never end up that way.

I hope that after all these years that I’m going to be working as a physio, I can still cry when a loved one passes on. I can still appreciate the concept of death and what it entails and how, sad as it is, how beautiful it is. I want to know that I’ve not hardened up emotionally and will still be able to sympathise with a patient with a terminal disease or who is medically untreatable. That I can still step back and appreciate and treasure the memories that I’ve seen and heard and talked about with a patient, no matter how brief that encounter was.

I don’t want to turn into a heartless blank canvas, like the doctors.

No offence but apart from the one doctor I’ve worked with her, none other has garnered my actual respect. No doubt, I’m just a lowly newly graduated physiotherapist but everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

These men, trained with the titles of “Dr” before their names, stethoscopes around their necks, their every word final law, their diagnoses carved of personal stone tablets reminiscent of the 10 commandments.

Working people say that there is such a thing as letting go of work when the time strikes 5pm. You put down your diaries, you put down your Blackberry, you put down your organisers and pens and pagers and work cellphones and you LEAVE work. You let go of what you’ve seen, heard, dealt with, and you go home, ready to start that personal life that you left behind when you stepped out of the car that morning.

But is that even possible in a health professional career?

I guess so, even with these men with stethoscopes.

When the outcomes are heart-breakable, they become these stoic beings, blank canvasses for faces, a simple shrug of their shoulders and a shake of their heads, showing no emotions whatsoever. No empathy. No sadness. Nothing. They dispense medical death sentences and robotic interventions designed in the hope of keeping you alive that much longer. Another blood test form scribbled out in barely legible writing, asking to prove that the levels of troponin I/white cell count/infection markers have dropped significantly enough so that they can kick you out of the hospital to free the bed up for another victim. If the diagnosis is truly grim, they document “Hospice input required” and wash their hands clean of the patient until s/he end up in hospital again, too sick to live life outside of 24/7 IV lines and urinary catheters.

Whatever happened to compassion? Whatever happened to caring about patients, building rapport and a genuine interest in helping people heal because they matter? Or have the hospital system morphed into a money making machine, that we can justify more funding from the Ministry of Health just because we treat X amount of patients yearly?

True, we need to clear beds because there are people that need them more than others. True, we can run without funding and our business deals in human beings and their healthcare but when cost becomes the all important factor, what happens to the patient? What happens to the main focus of our professions? What happens to the Hippocratic Oath?

Do I stand to lose all that as time goes by? Do I stand to become a work-hardened warrior, unflinching as one by one, people bid their final farewells? Does work for the next few years entail signing notes, kicking people out of bed and out of hospital because they are able to get out of bed independently and they are mobilising well and they can go home, nil further physio input required?

Maybe I really should start praying before I enter the hospital every morning.