Take Me Home

I am the girl who doesn't play as hard as she works.

My first job out of college was as a pediatric dietitian at a very large teaching hospital. This is very rare, to be hired for such a specialized position as a new graduate. Optimistically I packed up my beloved Merck manual, all of my college textbooks and my well-worn medical dictionary - and off I went to be wildly successful.

I don't know, in retrospect, exactly what I was envisioning. I think that it involved me wearing a lollipop printed skirt and making up "fun" games and handouts for the children. In my naive mind's eye, the children were sitting up in their beds, adorable in their pajamas and excited by the brightly colored stickers that I was about to give them. I knew that I had a lot to learn, but I reasoned that I'd done very well in college and that this would be similar. I'd come home from work, change into a cute jogging outfit, stop by the coffee shop for a latte and then go to one of the medical school's libraries to study. I would be the best pediatric dietitian ever. I would be happy and successful.

On my first day on the job, I was told that I was in charge of general pediatrics, the pediatric intensive care unit (the PICU), and the OB unit. This was not how the job was described to me during my interview. I found my way to the PICU, and the automatic doors slammed shut behind me. I stood in the center of the room, my shoes glued to the floor, and took in the chaos surrounding me. Then I turned around and walked back through the glass doors, went to the bathroom, and cried. These were not children. These were infants so premature and sick that they didn't have the energy to cry or kick. They lay silently in their bassinets struggling to breathe. Their skin was so translucent that you could see their hearts beating and their lungs inflating with startling, heartbreaking clarity. Such a conglomeration of needles and tubes were attached to each infant that it was difficult to trace where each began and ended. I didn't learn about this in school. Stickers, obviously, were not going to help.

I began to pray, for the first time in years. I was not told, when I started my job, that if there was a picture of a flower covered in dewdrops taped to one of the OB doors, the woman had lost her child. I went into a room, not noticing the picture affixed to the door. "Congratulations," I started. She cried, and I backed out of the room.

I went on rounds every morning. The doctors, the pharmacists, and I would shuffle from bed to bed. It was like being dropped into a war-torn country and surrounded by the sick and the dying with no translator available. I stopped answering my phone. My friends would, undoubtedly, ask me what I was doing if I picked up. I didn't want to tell the truth, "I'm going to study metabolic disorders that I can't even pronounce for four or five hours. Then, when I'm too tired to read any more, I'm going to lie on my back in the middle of my living room floor, and I'm going to sob until my eyes are swollen shut and I'm nauseated and lightheaded. Enough about me though, what are you up to?"

Some of my co-workers admitted that they felt overwhelmed and hopeless too. This realization comforted me. Maybe I wasn't crazy. The people who didn't cry sometimes found other ways to escape the harsh reality surrounding us. Alcohol usage was prevalent. "You have to play as hard as you work," an attending physician declared one morning. Something inside of me snapped. "I'll be damned," I thought. I'd lost 15 pounds by this point and I wasn't sleeping very well. The sadness had turned to rage, and now I was pouring out adrenaline. I was having an increasing number of heart palpitations exacerbated, no doubt, by my reliance on caffeine. I drank seven shots of espresso on a dare one morning before rounds, and I felt no different than usual. For working in a wellness profession, I sure wasn't living a lifestyle that reflected it. "What did you eat for dinner?" my sister asked me one night. "Oh, some cheddar cheese crackers," I replied with a laugh.

I decided not to play as hard as I worked. It was difficult at the beginning. "You are going to sit here, in this big comfortable chair, and you're just going to listen to the music," I demanded of myself. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves, and so I did, and it became easier with time. I began to notice all of the little things that I'd become numb to over the past few months. I noticed how good it felt to wiggle my toes in bed, I noticed how the sound of the heater clicking on calmed me, and I noticed how wonderful fresh air smells. Some people go out to relax. I came home instead. I began to prepare food for myself again. I took my frustration out on bread dough, punching it down and inhaling the warm and yeasty aroma as I let go of all of the things that I couldn't change. I read a lot of books, escaping into worlds far away from the beeping and whirring of medical equipment. I took a lot of hot bubble baths.

Spring came, and I sat on my patio letting the sun beat down on my thighs. I opened my windows on rainy days and watched the pouring water clean the grimy world. I began to journal again, something that I'd given up when words didn't seem sufficient to describe what I was going through. I healed, slowly but surely remembering who I was. I am the girl who listens to jazz music on Sunday mornings while making scones. I am the girl who curls up and disappears into Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry. I am the girl who paints and makes mosaic coasters even though my creations usually don't come out right, but I'm always smiling when I throw them away. I left pediatrics ten months after starting. On my last day I turned around and walked back through the glass doors, went to the bathroom and cried. It was as hard to leave on my last day as it was to come in on my first day. I left because this ten floor top-notch medical school just wasn't home, and all of the bubble baths and books in the world weren't going to fix that. I work at a small rehabilitation hospital now. I make sure that all of the patients are nourished enough to heal, and provide comfort to the ill by giving them a little bit of "home" on their meal trays. I like to believe that it helps them as much as it helps me.

Elaine M. Koontz is a freelance writer and a registered, licensed dietitian who is currently employed as the Assistant Director of Food and Nutrition Services at a rehabilitation hospital in Erie, Pennsylvania.

~Elaine M. Koontz