An Immersive Experience: A Christmas Story
“You one of the staff or are you a patient here?”
Typical jokey question that almost everyone has been asked here. However, I realised as I glanced in my reflection in the window (shatter-proofed, they were always shatter-proofed) that I looked tired, dishevelled, and apart from the small white badge that distinguished me as a trainee clinical psychologist, there was almost nothing to distinguish between myself and many of the residents on Aurora ward. I have always noticed that they always give psychiatric wards names like Aurora, Elysium or Honeysuckle. Optimistically picturesque names given in the hope that they would elicit some comfort or succour for their troubled residence. Unfortunately, the tranquillity of the names usually failed to reflect the turbulence that lay within the ward. Staff shortages, a suspected outbreak of MRSA on the adjacent building and the chronic shortage of beds combined with the insatiable demand of those outside seeking sanctuary within gave the impression of a fortress under siege rather than a place of rehabilitation and recovery.
It was Friday morning. The last Friday before Christmas and it was at that point I realised I was “in it”, immersed, subsumed. Five days before Christmas, and my thoughts were not of smiling families exchanging gifts or carol singers, red cheeked from the cold December air. My only thought was “How could I leave, when there was still so much to do?”
I had been assigned to the ward about two weeks after I had arrived at the hospital. Ostensibly I was there to run a support group, provide a little one-on-one therapy for those that could make use of it, and to work with the staff in helping them. It was all good. Surrey had a proud tradition of sending its best and brightest into place where angels feared to tread. We had all arrived at the start of the year all eager and willing to get stuck in; we had been trained together for six weeks, seeing one another for almost every day. However, on arrival we had been flung to the far corners of the hospital, to work in various departments and wards where we barely saw one another apart from brief glimpses in the corridors. We had gone from the security of a cohort who knew each other, to the alienation of knowing almost nobody.
It had been okay on the ward at the start. In my exuberance to be doing hands on work, I was able to overlook the fading pale green paint, the lingering bodily smells masked with industrial detergent and the Victorian-era dormitories where eight slept to a room, sectioned off in thin white curtains. I was able to justify the lukewarm meals that were prepared off site, dispatched across London and arrived congealed. I didn’t take fright at the admissions that required four burly male nurses to frogmarch someone in. You learn to accept a lot. Because you know that no matter how bad it may feel like in here, it was infinitely worse on the harsh outside. Everyday you would hear stories. Tales of squalid flats, uncaring families, grinding unyielding poverty, and those that wound up grounded on the rocks of heavy addiction. Most had the common thread of brutal isolation in an unknowing, apathetic, world.
At first I didn’t realise it was getting to me. I started off as confident, resilient, the summer spent with friends and loved ones still lingering in my mind and things didn’t seem so bad. It was punishing to start off with getting used to waking up at 6am, commuting with the rush, getting to work, commuting back to your room in halls and falling asleep. Rinse and repeat. At times I made the journey on autopilot, the hospital gate, the ward door, the noise of your boots on the cracked linoleum floor. The place where your bag goes, the noise of the cleaner emptying the bins outside. The only way you can tell it’s a different day is by the changing date on the top left corner of your diary. Its noble work, you tell yourself, you are doing some good. The pace of the work is relentless, and there is never enough time and there is always something more you could be doing. You don’t need your boss telling you, you begin to start telling yourself. The meetings with the other trainees at university, who all seemed to be taking it in their stride. They too would talk of their amazing experiences, but in a universally positive light, which always left you with the uneasy nagging feeling that they were not going through what you were. As its late autumn/ early winter you arrive in darkness and leave in darkness. The sun is something you barely see out of the window while you are bolting down a sandwich, because your therapy group overran and you have to catch up on your process notes. I started feeling that I was almost living for the people in the ward, living around them, acting as an auxiliary to them, a supporting character in someone else’s story. The endless cigarettes, the innumerable meetings and ward rounds, the names that keep cropping up repeatedly were the daily rhythm of life, making you feel that you were a part of a living soap opera. All of life was represented on the ward, sadness, joy, kindness, cruelty, and the entire raft of human experience played out in small scale under the harsh glow of white fluorescent lighting. So how could I leave for Christmas? Nothing could conceivably feel authentic or real anymore?
It was four days later. The morning of Christmas Eve. It was only after my train actually pulled away from Kings Cross I started to feel still enough to think again. I had been in a state of action and reaction for long enough, but with every mile further away from London the further I could step back and see what was happening. In many ways it was understandable that I had fallen into the traps that I had. One could read all the books in the world and spend years in the lecture hall, but the ultimate form of learning was only possible in the real world. As the countryside sped by me, I realised I had been focussing purely on what was left to do, rather than taking stock of what I had been able to accomplish. This had meant I had been constantly on the offensive, and unable to let up. Objectively, I knew that there was no way I could solve all the problems on the ward, let alone in someone’s private life. It was just that it was easy to forget when you were living through the situation.
I had a fortnight off over Christmas. I was able to reconnect to my old friends, see my family and was able to do something other than practice of clinical psychology. It added further perspective and distance from the situation at work, but it also had the effect on changing the focus. For a change, I was the centre of attention, the prodigal son, who had returned after months of limited contact. I noticed I was not as tired, and had the energy to go out with friends. My social circle expanded dramatically, as people dropped by to catch up on news. Everyone I used to know was back in my hometown reunited with their respective families. As we talked, they would sometimes allude to their own “immersion”, how their lives had been taken over in the post-graduation tornado of establishing themselves at work, finding places to live, and generally figuring out how to spend their life as well who to spend it with. Some had coped better than others but it was good to see it wasn’t just me that was going through this on my own. Little by little, getting away from the situation also reminded me why I wanted to be doing the job that I was training to do. Despite the hardships, it was something that still interested me, and something I felt I could do well. I guess it was important to realise that in order for me to hold on.
It was with a lighter heart that I returned to work in the first week of January. When I got back to the ward things seemed different. Sure, there were still the same people, the same problems and the situation hadn’t changed. However, I wasn’t letting things get to me as much, and found I was able to be more patient. To be absolutely honest, I am not sure if there was anything in particular that got me through the New Year. The actual break from work was important, as was the physical distance and just being able to reconnect with my friends and family. It made me more aware of the part of me that wasn’t a trainee and, while important to me, that there was more to my life than my work.
It would be entirely fair to say that I am still “immersed” in the situation, and probably will be for the rest of my working life. It may even be that the training is the way it is to get you used to the fact that it is relentless and unforgiving in the wider world, and the only way to get you used to it, is by chucking you in at the deep end. However, the gap taught me that there is a difference between being immersed in a situation and being totally overwhelmed by it and I feel I needed to learn that first hand. I guess it’s a good sign that people have stopped asking me whether I am “staff or patient” since.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.