Don’t Take Your Work Home With You
“The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles.”
- Mahatma Ghandhi
I just got home from a long “call” in the CPEP (psych ER). It’s Sunday night. I REALLY miss weekends. I haven’t had a full weekend off in a while, and I really miss having one day a week where I can relax. When you only have one day off a week, it tends to be spent catching up on errands and not actually relaxing. At least that’s how it works for me.
I saw a bunch of patients today. As we were giving our sign-outs tonight to the oncoming shift, I realized the intensity of loss and sadness, which is just an ordinary day in the CPEP. Floridly psychotic patients, a patient whose mother had given up on her and dumped her in the ER, patients with chronic, unremitting substance abuse, a first psychotic break which might just ruin a young man’s opportunities at having a productive life, a child who was born as a “crack baby” and had their life made difficult from birth, an elderly male with such severe tardive dyskinesia that he didn’t want to live anymore, a severely demented man who thought I was his dead wife.
Just another day in the CPEP.
And try as I might, it’s very challenging to see this kind of sadness on a daily basis and not be affected. To not take my work home with me is an impossible task.
But it’s late on a Sunday night and I have to arise early in the morning. And I am grateful for all that I have learned. And all that my patients have taught me. Good night, world!
Photos: From my walk to and from the subway stop on my way to the hospital last week.