Most waitresses don't have to deal with death. They usually just deal with cranky customers and never see them again. During my first job as a waitress at an assisted living home for the elderly, I would have a cranky customer and then not see them again because they died. And a plaque would show up on the wall and all the waiters would gather around to see who wasn't coming to dinner that night. Their spouse would come down to dinner alone or their group of friends would have a chair empty at their table now. And life would go on.
When I first learned about Child Life during my senior year of college, I was volunteering at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. I was asked to cover for the Child Life Specialist (CLS) on the kids floor and I fell in love with her job. From what I could tell she played games with kids and handed out tickets to museums. She made kids happy. She allowed these kids to be kids when they were facing circumstances that some adults couldn't handle. My friends asked if it was depressing to be around all those sick kids, but it honestly was not.
It wasn't until I started my graduate program that I realized how prevalent death would be in this job. Class after class brought up how to deal with a child dying and how to help the families after their child has died. Professors shared stories about a child dying on Halloween in her angel costume or the CLS who had to actually carry a baby down to the morgue because the family was too grief-stricken to do it themselves.
My first internship was in the Hematology/Oncology clinic of a Boston hospital. I was supposed to receive over 400 supervised hours but I was left alone a lot. I was given the keys to the clinic and it wasn't because my supervisors were neglectful or lazy, they were busy. So instead of being treated like an intern I was given the opportunities and advantages that a full-fledged CLS would receive. I was talking with doctors and supporting families and accompanying children to their procedures. I would have lunch with my supervisor or pass her in the hallway but for the most part, it was just me and I liked it. I was good at it. But at the end of the day, when I got home, I would crumble under the weight of what I had experienced that day.
The most important skill a CLS needs is to be a professional. Boundaries can easily become muddled when working in such a delicate environment. You need to be able to hear bad news in one room, console an upset mother in the next room and then be able to play checkers with a kid in the other room without giving any sort of indication of what is going on around them and this would happen every day.
I experienced the deaths of three patients during my internship and learned of the death of a 4th patient after my internship was completed. This was always the reminder that while my job was to make sure these kids got to be kids; that cancer was cancer, and it was going to do it's job as well. Everyone in the clinic would gather around and talk about the final events but then it was time to move on to the next thing. To the kids who were still fighting for their lives. There wasn't time to grieve.
When I learned about the 4th patient who died, I was completely caught off guard. On the last day of my internship he was still in the hospital but he was on the mend. There wasn't any indication that he would be dead a month after I left. I found out the news right before class, from one of my classmates who was now interning in my old position at the clinic. I was asking her for updates on certain kids and when I brought up Ross, the 4th patient, I was floored when she told me he had passed away months ago.
Boundaries got muddled with Ross and his family. I saw him every day that I was at my internship and we would play card games or Monopoly and sometimes after my hour was up, his father would follow me out of the room and would thank me, teary-eyed, as he told me how important these visits were to Ross. These were the times when it made moving on to the next patient difficult. But I appreciated him telling me that I was making a difference. It was hard to tell sometimes when I spent most of my time playing games with kids, if I was actually helping at all.
It was shortly after I learned about his death that I dropped out of graduate school. It wasn't the main reason, but it was a contributing factor. I had reached my breaking point with a lot of things and death was definitely one of them.
So I'm back to the drawing board, trying to figure out what I want to pursue now. All I know is that I don't want to work in an environment where death is a normal occurrence. I wish I could, but I've just simply had enough of it.
Every once in a while I'll have a dream about Ross. I'll dream about him sitting in his hospital bed in his yellow bathrobe, surrounded by his stuffed animals. He's still bald and frail, but he's always smiling. In my dreams, he is exactly like he was on the last day I saw him.
And then I wake up.
And life goes on.
Monday, April 4, 2011
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I always envy anyone who's able to stay in the health profession - whether it's as a vet or in a hospital or clinic like you were working in. For all the good that people can do in those places, the bad that happens [people/kids dying], often overshadows that. In a perfect world, one could work there and somehow only deal with the good stuff and never have to have any patient die. But since this isn't a perfect world, people do have to die and it can be beyond overwhelming to have to deal with this on a regular basis. I admire those that do, but I also think they have put up a brick wall inside, so as to not let emotions affect them as much. That means the good stuff too. I mean, how else can one deal with that type of situation so often?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this is getting to be quite the rambling, but I just wanted to say, I understand your decision to leave grad school partly based on this experience. Never think less of yourself because of your decision. I'm sure your future will thank you for making that decision, as it sounds like dealing with death so often would drive you crazy and affect a lot of your life. I know it certainly would for me.
First off, thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog!
ReplyDeleteSecond, you are absolutely right. By trying to protect myself from the bad situations I also put up a wall and prevented myself from experiencing many good situations as well. It was a time in my life where I turned into a loner. I didn't want to see friends or date. I hid in my shell and self-medicated and for a long time, just pretended that everything was ok. I never really thought of it that way until I read your comment so thank you for bringing that up.
Thankfully, I have done a lot of growing since then and I have blossomed into quite a social butterfly. It feels good to feel good again. To feel better than I actually ever have before. It was well worth the struggle.
[i'm sad to see that only now, as i tried to find a way to contact you for your kind words on that other blogging site, that i see you replied to my post - i apparently need to update my blogspot preferences to e.mail me when someone replies to a thread as i've probably missed other comments folks have left after me on blogspot-hosted blogs too - eep!]
ReplyDeleteI'm currently going through a struggle that came on very suddenly and though there's a ton of boring details on how things got bad within a 48 hour period, I *know* that somehow I will get things right and be back out of this hole. I actually didn't mean to make this reply sound like it was all about me, but I wanted to preface my comment with that because it is nice to know that you've gotten yourself out of that rut since leaving grad school. The "light at the end of the tunnel" so to speak.
Anyway, this complete stranger is very happy to hear that you've been able to rise up above this darkness and blossom [is that sentence too full of cliche's?]. I hope you post here more often, as you are quite a good writer! And yes, I need to post on my blog [which i doubt is even linked anywhere here, but since there's simply a "coming soon" landing page at my blog, even putting that link here would kinda be pointless].
And...*thank you* for your words of kindness on that other site. Sometimes I kinda feel like I'm talking to myself there [which at times, i am ok with, but at other times, it is nice to see that people actually read what i write - i'm not one to ask for help, as my roll in this world seems to be as the one to always give it and to run away as fast as i can when someone tries to provide it for me, but just the same, it was very nice to read your words of encouragement. Thank you, Mallory.]
Hi. I'm an MD, but I don't see patients. I did in medical school, though. I loved your article.
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to read it!
ReplyDelete