Theresa Richardson
26 October, 2010
GER 192
Fly Away Home
Take a moment to think about the experiences that helped you grow. I bet all of them had to do with leaving your comfort zone, if not most. College has been for me one of those great steps in my life – not exclusively, but part of an ongoing journey. All of the things that have happened along the way have challenged my personality, my values, my strengths and my weaknesses. I am evolving, and one of the greatest opportunities I owe to this was leaving that comfort zone this past summer. Hoping to discover more about my future aspirations in Clinical Nutrition and German, I left in June of 2010 for Germany to work at a hospital.
I have to admit that a small anxiety struck me as I began working there. I was stationed at the orthopedic section where most of the patients were well into their 80’s, and probably not too far from the end of their time. Most of them knew it, too. One of the painful things was seeing what age can bring, and how many of the things that I take for granted they could no longer do alone – from holding a spoon, to being able to speak, to going to the bathroom. I remember a particular incident. There was a very kind woman who was sometimes difficult to understand but I liked her very much. I was asked one day to take her to the radiology room to x-ray her broken hip. As we were waiting for the radiologist I began to make conversation with her, starting with one of my usual questions, namely, where did she come from? I watched as her eyebrows came together into a worried frown and her lips struggled to give me an answer. Instead of words, tears came out. It struck me that she could not remember. I was told earlier that day that a newcomer of ours had Alzheimer’s disease. It was her. I felt awful.
Despite the emotional toll, as the days went by I began to build inspiration as I learned what an impact my own happiness and confidence could have in the people I dealt with. Every person became to me a small challenge; I would try to make them a little happier because I was and am still convinced that they would heal faster. The happier patients had more inner as well as outer strength. They tried more and pushed themselves a little further to become well again. One such incident occurred as a colleague of mine and I were taking a patient back to her bed after a knee replacement. Things seemed fine until she began to complain of lightheadedness and difficulty breathing. We looked at her face and she was rather pale. Her body did not handle the surgery well. She promptly threw up into a bag we had given her and, suddenly, her eyes closed and breathing came to a complete stop. My fellow nurse patted her on the face, trying to wake her up. Nothing happened. The nurse quickly yelled for me to alert the others. My eyes widened and I ran to tell our staff as emergency help came. I watched while oxygen tanks were hauled over and men in red ran to the rescue. I almost forgot to breathe myself. She’s dead, I thought. She wasn’t moving. That was the last I saw of her that day.
The next morning a light flickered for service in front of one of the patient rooms. I went inside. I looked at both beds to see which patient needed help and saw it was the very woman from yesterday, as though back from the dead. She was weak, but she was okay. The patient told me she needed to wash herself at the sink. As I began helping her out of bed with her operated leg, she whimpered from the pain. I could see the doubt in her eyes. I began to doubt myself in helping her; knowing that a patient was hurting was a difficult thing to hear. I remembered though that even with the proper movements the first few days can hurt when getting out of bed. I also knew that many of the patients’ complaints were partly psychological. With that in mind, I decided to continue. I was holding her feet, ready to place them slowly on the side of the bed. She looked miserable and did not want to move but I forced a smile on my face. It hurts a little at first, but you will get much better soon, I said. We can do this no problem. With a little hesitation, she proceeded to let me help her into a wheelchair to push her to the sink. We made it. As she washed her face at the wash basin, she stared at me through the mirror. The frown was still there. I took a chance and responded with a smile and a laugh. She saw this and the sides of her lips pulled upward into a genuine grin. Ever since then, I saw her happy and, despite her former condition, she made it out of the hospital after only a few days – surprisingly sooner than many others who from the start were better off. I learned that day that my doubts were the patient’s doubts. Sometimes I needed to be happy and confident for them when they could not.
Confidence was probably one of my bigger obstacles, and it was amplified due to a language hindrance. I learned words in the hospital that I had never used or heard before: radiology, infusion, post-operation room, casts, physical therapist, wheelchair, pacemaker, and shutters, to name a few. The first several days of course I had no idea what colleagues were asking of me. I knew they wanted something, but what? I knew the patient needed medication, but where were they hurting? The morning discussions, just before our shifts, I could not understand at all. They went by so fast and were filled with these medical terms. I recall sitting at our conference table every morning with pen in hand and the list of patients in front of me, not knowing what to write. I felt discouraged because I knew it was important to jot down important points about individual patients. Two weeks went by like this for me when, one morning, I understood everything.
I remember all of the information that came rushing to me about the patients I saw daily – things I had never known about them. One could not sleep at night and was constantly drenched in sweat, the other’s wounds kept bleeding, a man down the hall kept pulling out his catheters, and another had to have their hands strapped down like a child to prevent her from getting out of bed. I was in awe. Many of these patients I would come into deep conversations with. I knew a little about them, but that morning I felt as though I had full access into their private lives. In a way, I did. Yet every now and then, I gave them access to my own, instead.
Perhaps washing old people’s feet does not sound like the most delectable thing to do, but it was in fact the time I bonded best with the patients. A lot of them had good stories to tell, as well as good advice. About halfway into my internship I was given some when I needed it most. I will never forget the woman that helped me.
[1-2 paragraph cut...a little confidential. if you would like to read this missing part, though, email me.]
Everything felt to me a push to better understand myself and mature. For example, this internship was my first experience working full-time, and the tasks needed to be learned fast. Within two days I was washing patients, changing their clothes, taking blood pressure, transferring samples between labs, reeling people in and out of radiology rooms and, God forbid, helping them out of bed on their broken or newly operated legs as I had mentioned before. These were a few of the many tasks that I undertook every day. The shifts were difficult, too. I would sometimes work late at night only to wake up the next morning at five to begin the early shift. I was averaging five hours of sleep a night. At some point I was afraid I would be making love to the free coffee in our work room when I started to notice something. I had almost no struggle for energy and I began to understand why. I loved what I was doing. I loved my work.
There were many things about the job that I liked. I was always busy and felt I had a sense of purpose. I enjoyed moving around and rarely sitting down. Actually, my long-term back pains went away after the first week. I wish I could say they did not return upon coming back home. Another thing I enjoyed was the innovation. I learned so many new things as far as how hospitals work and patient care goes. I was also able to improve my German. I suppose that some of the excitement of new things faded somewhat as I became familiar with the regular duties, but there was always something new and every client was different. And what I loved most of all was the faith I found in random patients. Strangely enough, sometimes they would have confidence in me when I did not.
The push I needed to succeed as a newbie came from the very souls I was taking care of. One of my first embarrassments, aside from not understanding some people, was failing to put stockings on correctly after washing feet. I would take too long, or put them on backwards, or measure the size incorrectly. I was finally beginning to get it right when I found myself frustrated yet again as I put on the left stocking of a woman incorrectly for the second time in a row. I looked helplessly at her, about to suggest that I get another nurse to finish the job. I was shaming myself too as I never knew myself to give up. The lady looked a little annoyed as she eyed me and said, No! Don’t get anyone. Try it again. I did, and I got it right. I remember coming out of that room realizing that the relationship between patient and nurse was a dual support system. I was there, hardly a legal adult, taking care of grown people. Yet by the same token, grown people whose bodies had almost given up on them were reminding me to never give up on myself. It was this connection that I found made my job beautiful.
As I considered nursing as a future option, I learned about the salary differences between Germany and the United States. It was big. Because I felt it rather easy to picture myself in this career path, I began asking my coworkers what they were earning. None of them gave me a happy answer. I was shocked. I learned that even the doctors did not make much. In disbelief, I explained to them that where I lived a nurse could make up to ninety thousand annually. Doctors make up to two hundred thousand per year. Each time I said this to someone I watched as his or her jaw dropped and eyes bulged out. I was actually just as confused myself. If people in the health business did not make much, then who did? I learned it was the teachers, in which case, California seems to be the alternate universe. I did not think it was fair for nurses and doctors to work for such an important cause and to receive so little. On the other hand, there was a great benefit to studying medicine in Germany: the cheap tuition. So I thought, could I make studying medicine in Germany a possibility for myself? It was the first time I had genuinely considered getting an advanced degree. I felt kind of enlightened. I had never really given much thought past my Bachelor’s degree of Science and license in Dietetics. For the first time I asked myself, do I want to be a doctor?
My next mission was to find out whether I could go to medical school in Germany and how challenging it would be. I heard good news. Apparently the grade cut is not as difficult for foreign students coming into Germany. I am German, but I am also a U.S. citizen. If I addressed myself as American, so I was told, I would have a chance at getting in – if my grades were still pretty good. I remember hearing this and racing ahead in my mind, two years from now, thinking about the things I would do. It sort of seemed far away, the time until I would graduate from U.C. Davis, but it hit me that same moment that two years is not long at all. I was a little scared at the thought. I felt the same way I had in my junior year of high school when I realized it was time to prepare for college. I know the future is always right around the corner, but with school, the major turns in the road seem to smack you in the face every two years. It’s a lot to consider, but I am glad this experience helped me think on a larger scale.
It must have been around the last week of my internship that I began to feel kind of empty. I loved the work, the patients and the city, but when I stopped to realize that I was leaving soon I did not feel so excited anymore. There were not too many people to say goodbye to, but that was just it. I had a few relatives and a pen pal nearby. Still, I knew I was lacking in a social life. It was not long before my mind was no longer in Germany. It was in California. It was at home with my friends. It was in Davis with school. I felt at times unbearably anxious to go back home, but in a good way. Something about my experiences here made me ready to face some of the challenges I had back in the bay. Some part of me was excited about the wonderful people I knew I would meet and experiences I knew I would have. Freiburg was like that breath of air that reminded me to appreciate the pure feeling of living. And I was ready to live my life again in California.
I left Freiburg feeling as though I had only a taste of something when I meant to devour the entire cake. Germany will somehow be part of my future, I thought. I did not know how, but I knew some way it would. I also made a promise to myself that if I decided to study medicine, I would school there.
In this same week a new intern came to work, and it was then that I learned how much I had really progressed. I was shocked when I first met her. It was not because she looked strange. It was not because she was unfriendly. What surprised me was that I saw in her an awkwardness and insecurity that I had never seen in anyone at the hospital – except in myself. I was asked to accompany her on a few things, show her around the hospital, etc. I showed her procedures that she did with hesitation as I once had. Now, they were second nature to me. The next day I was asked to demonstrate to her how blood sugar was measured. As I calmly drew the sample of blood from a patient’s finger, I realized I was no longer a newbie. I really felt like a member of the nursing team.
Overall I felt more like an adult. I was not tired at work but squeezing in an hour to workout would exhaust me. The only thing that kept me fairly in shape was that I was walking around all of the time and doing pushups at home. My relatives were around, but work became my number one priority because it was the thing that consumed most of my time. I finally learned how to balance work, some exercise, small house chores, and friend and family time after a while, but not without a crash day. I mean it. Once a week I slept for as much as seventeen hours. But after that, I was fully charged for the rest of the week on my five-hour sleep regime. The exhaustion to me though felt very rewarding and I liked the busy lifestyle, after I learned to balance out my health and social life. The funny thing is that for the days on which I was recuperating, I missed work. The only thing holding me back from asking for more hours was my body needing to rest. I knew I could soon kiss those crash days good-bye, however, as my work came to a slow and unwilling close.
The last few days of my stay in Germany felt like standing in front of a time-warp elevator that would shoot me back from Neverland to the Real World. I needed to go. I was ready to go. But I did not want to leave it all behind. I saw myself close up a little around my relatives, confused by the mixed emotions. It will all be gone. It will all be over, I thought. On September 17, 2010, I took the train through Switzerland to arrive at the Dusseldorf Airport headed for San Francisco. Suddenly, things felt different. I felt strange. I boarded the plane filled with something new inside me. Perhaps it was gained confidence, inner peace, or knowledge – call it what you will. Whatever it was, it lifted me higher that day than the plane that flew me home. And I realized something. Everything I was afraid of leaving behind, I had already taken with me.
