- 24
- Jun
After a couple of months away from everything I know, I was back. Back from doing whatever I wanted. Back from thinking you had no responsibilities.
Back to reality.
I'll start my series here, in the most recent episode in my life – it's really not as if there was something majorly exciting about my life before this, so you're not really missing anything. As I said before, I was back. I recently took a vacation away from work (I'm pretty sure even workaholics have heard of this word before, though I don't consider my self as such) for a couple of months. I honestly thought it would be longer, but fate, it seemed, was not on my side.
I work in a local government hospital (no point in pin-pointing what hospital exactly). I used to be a volunteer over there (which basically means you work for the sheer satisfaction of caring for the sick and the wounded; Need more translation? You work and work and work and you get no compensation for it) and now, after a year of doing all the work, they get to pay me a small amount for my services. It isn’t much to celebrate over, but hey, it’s better than nothing, right?
I immediately had to start my week in the night shift which starts at ten in the evening until six in the morning the following day. Good thing, I had someone with me to help as I was supposed to handle twice the number of patients that you can count in one hand. I didn’t find it hard to find my game up and running. I was only out for a couple of months, so nobody really thought that I had to be oriented to the area once more.
I knew what was coming since I still had to work in the same department as I had before (in my case, I work at the Surgery Department), so I knew that it wasn’t going to be a particularly easy-going or pleasant shift (when you work in the government hospital of a third world country, it’s never easy-going – ok, maybe once in a while it is). More often than not, you have someone under your watch dying on you. Trust me, after a fair few deaths under your shift, you cease to feel this ache in your chest whenever you hear the cries of sorrow of those who were left behind. I’m not an unfeeling human being, but this is the nature of our work. We see sick and dying people eight hours a day, five days a week. As the saying goes, “Life goes on…” It might sound harsh, but that’s life for us.
I don’t mean to introduce you to the gloomy reality of my world, but despite the morose feeling, I was pleasantly surprised.
Life has given me a fair few pleasantries to give me hope that, in the future, I will be happy, not that I intend to not be.
I found out that I missed people. I missed how I was with them. When I’m with my colleagues, I am an easy-going person, not particularly hard to please. And as hard as I tried to deny it, I also missed doing my job. I missed doing my responsibilities that are entailed in my title – I’m talking about the R.N. title.
I was even more pleasantly surprised to know that people missed me, too. I didn’t realize that. I thought I was insignificant enough for people to forget after a couple of months away.
At the end of my first shift back, I was happy. I didn’t expect to be. I was excited even, to go back to work again.
As I look back, I ask myself why I felt that way. Working in a hospital with more patients than one person could ever handle would normally translate to stress, frustration and disappointment to myself.
But then, I figured, at the end of the day, all you really need to think about is the people you have around you. If they’re almost just like you, usually calm, collected with enough sense of humor to keep you up all night. Then there’s really no need to worry.
