Last Friday I saw patients for the first time at County Hospital. New volunteers are supposed to shadow an established chaplain for at least four visits, and then be shadowed for at least two visits before seeing patients on their own, but Clementine said she didn’t think I needed to shadow anyone. I did three visits with her observing and then she said I can go ahead and see patients on my own. One visit was complicated, with an upset patient and an even more upset family member. Everywhere we went, Clementine announced proudly to other staff members that I just completed a year of CPE at the Truly Wonderful Medical Center.
I was glad to find that the gel at County Hospital seems fine in regard to smell, consistency and lack of adverse skin reaction. At TWMC, there is a dispenser outside every single patient room and often inside, too, but at County Hospital, there is a dispenser only about every four rooms, which dispenses a set amount that is way more than I would normally use.
On Saturday, Lisa and I took a walk in Tilden Park, our first in quite some time.
Late last week, Anita, my joyful ex-CPE supervisor, texted me about a job that has opened up at TWMC. It is precisely my dream job—one I was hoping would turn up two and a half years from now, after I finish school. I decided it would not make sense to apply now—that it’s someone else’s job. I told myself I will trust that what I need will turn up when I need it.
Then I spent most of Sunday with another CPE supervisor. We took BART to Point Richmond to go to Dharmata and hear the teachings of Tibetan Buddhist teacher Anam Thubten, who has quite a presence. After that, we had a beautiful brunch on the sunny back patio of Brezo. I told him—let’s call him Graham—my reasoning about the job, including that my boss at the Very Fantastic Medical Center will kill me if I quit my new job right after it starts. He said, “Hmm. I’m sure she’d understand that your dream job came along.” I told him that my school requires volunteering, and there is no way I can fit in school, my dream job, and volunteering. He said, “Hmm. Do they require volunteering per se, or just that you are practicing your clinical skills somewhere?” That very question has been lurking in the back of my mind for some time. Maybe it doesn’t have to be actual volunteering.
So, after our lovely day together, I came home and applied for the job. As Graham pointed out, if I don’t get it, my situation continues to be perfectly fine, and if the job becomes available later, I will already be known as someone who is interested in it. That makes total sense, but when I reported to the Very Fantastic Medical Center for my first day of orientation today and was greeted by a surly person at the front desk instead a smiling, friendly one, I felt a stab of longing for TWMC.
Monday, October 02, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
A Bit of Quiet Thinking Time
I have formed a buddy relationship with one of my CPE peers, and after I was back from the East Bay on Monday, we met for dinner at Eric’s, a Chinese restaurant at 27th and Church. I think we are going to try to talk on the phone at the same time every week. My life is starting to overflow with wonderful people who are doing things they really care about.
I’ve been having as many days as possible where I don’t set an alarm when I go to sleep and am starting to feel more like myself again. Quite often I am sleeping ten and a half or eleven hours.
I have gone back to therapy as a pre-emptive measure. I know this work is going to bring a lot of stuff up that will require examination, and I also want another set of eyes looking out for secondary trauma that I might not notice. I’m seeing not the therapist I started seeing in my 20s, but the one I was seeing when I was with Carlos. She has a strong somatic focus, and our first session (yesterday) was wonderfully helpful. She put in clear context some behavior that has mystified me, and also drew a very obvious connection between that behavior and the ending of my relationship with F. In sum, I practiced insufficient boundaries with him, and so now I’m deploying overly firm boundaries where they aren’t needed (as in not wanting to answer the simplest of questions about what I’m up to). I would never have thought of that.
She also talked about how we can feel safe, or in danger, or in such fear for our lives that we completely freeze or collapse. She sees my firm boundaries as a response to feeling endangered—which is not as good as feeling safe, but better than feeling an existential threat.
Possibly the most powerful technique in my chaplain toolkit is counting mentally to three after the other person stops speaking, to see if they have more to say. Almost always, he or she does start talking again during that time. I tried this on my mother this morning and, after three seconds, she said, as if talking to herself, “Yeah—it’s good to have this time to just think.” Funny.
I went to my dentist for a cleaning this afternoon, and then to County Hospital for our weekly training session. I haven’t started to see patients yet; I will start soon. It turned out that Clementine was out sick—I hadn’t checked my email—so I walked back home again and had time to catch up on my blog. All caught up!
I’ve been having as many days as possible where I don’t set an alarm when I go to sleep and am starting to feel more like myself again. Quite often I am sleeping ten and a half or eleven hours.
I have gone back to therapy as a pre-emptive measure. I know this work is going to bring a lot of stuff up that will require examination, and I also want another set of eyes looking out for secondary trauma that I might not notice. I’m seeing not the therapist I started seeing in my 20s, but the one I was seeing when I was with Carlos. She has a strong somatic focus, and our first session (yesterday) was wonderfully helpful. She put in clear context some behavior that has mystified me, and also drew a very obvious connection between that behavior and the ending of my relationship with F. In sum, I practiced insufficient boundaries with him, and so now I’m deploying overly firm boundaries where they aren’t needed (as in not wanting to answer the simplest of questions about what I’m up to). I would never have thought of that.
She also talked about how we can feel safe, or in danger, or in such fear for our lives that we completely freeze or collapse. She sees my firm boundaries as a response to feeling endangered—which is not as good as feeling safe, but better than feeling an existential threat.
Possibly the most powerful technique in my chaplain toolkit is counting mentally to three after the other person stops speaking, to see if they have more to say. Almost always, he or she does start talking again during that time. I tried this on my mother this morning and, after three seconds, she said, as if talking to herself, “Yeah—it’s good to have this time to just think.” Funny.
I went to my dentist for a cleaning this afternoon, and then to County Hospital for our weekly training session. I haven’t started to see patients yet; I will start soon. It turned out that Clementine was out sick—I hadn’t checked my email—so I walked back home again and had time to catch up on my blog. All caught up!
If Good Looks Was a Minute, You Know that You Could Be an Hour
Friday of last week, Carol Joy came to town from Novato and we had lunch at Indochine Vegan Cuisine. I had tofu with eggplant and basil that was delicious, but somewhat overpriced for the amount. After that, we played cards all afternoon.
In the evening, I started looking at the documentation requirements for board certification and at the details of my new health insurance and got overwhelmed. I worked myself into quite a fit of negativity, but was able to notice that and remind myself to take some small constructive actions—getting a glass of water counts—and to practice metta for myself. At night, I used my new white noise machine for the first time and I think it did contribute to a good night’s sleep. No matter how much sleep I get since CPE ended, I feel exhausted. I think there is some kind of emotional weariness that will take a while to abate.
On Saturday, I went to Rainbow and ran into a friend from my meditation group who said a really perfect thing after Carlos died, in 2013. (Something like, “I am staggered by the immensity of your loss.”) On Saturday, he said another perfect thing. He mentioned a friend who is a hospice social worker, or some such, and when I asked how she likes that work, he said, “She flourished! She reminds me of you. Her spirituality reminds me of yours.”
I knew it was going to be hard once CPE was over and I didn’t have a team of people pushing and pulling me along every day. I rarely experienced doubt about the path I was on during the past 15 months—I didn’t have the time or energy to. I think that may be a problem in the next couple of years, but I will try to take it one day at a time. I do know what I need to do today. And I could not possibly have been any more affirmed during CPE, what with getting to do the palliative care rotation and getting one of the special awards and all the million nice things people, including my supervisors, said throughout the year. Getting a paying job immediately also seems like a good sign.
On Sunday, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I got to see the show about the Temptations again, this time with Carol Joy, preceded by lunch at Au Coquelet, and I liked it even more the second time. It is absolutely fabulous. (When I was five years old, my favorite song was a Temptations song. We lived 45 minutes from Motown.) Our seats were excellent a week earlier, about the eighth or ninth row from the front. The second time I saw it, I sat in the second row, even closer to the action. Carol Joy loved it, too.
At the end, there was a lengthy standing ovation. I was nearly in tears of gratitude for this music being brought so vividly to life and for the mesmerizing dancing, and I could see looks of stunned wonder on the faces of some of the cast members at the outpouring of love they were receiving; some of them looked like they were nearly in tears as well.
On Monday, I went to have a TB test read for my new job and then I took BART over to the East Bay to meet my friend Ann Marie. We had a very tasty lunch at Cancun Sabor, and then we strolled onto the UC Berkeley campus—as we were arriving, 50 police officers passed us, walking in formation—and sat by a little creek and talked for a long time. A family of five raccoons walked by, down near the water. When our butts started to hurt, we walked on and found a wooden bench to sit on.
From there, we could see maybe 10 police officers standing around across the street, and periodically a helicopter hovered overhead. A TV truck arrived and raised an antenna high in the air. Then the police officers got into a van and an armored vehicle and drove toward the center of campus. I felt kind of sad for the students. Many of them are so young. It’s a shame that their campus is a place of such chaos, and at times violence.
(Click photos to enlarge.)
In the evening, I started looking at the documentation requirements for board certification and at the details of my new health insurance and got overwhelmed. I worked myself into quite a fit of negativity, but was able to notice that and remind myself to take some small constructive actions—getting a glass of water counts—and to practice metta for myself. At night, I used my new white noise machine for the first time and I think it did contribute to a good night’s sleep. No matter how much sleep I get since CPE ended, I feel exhausted. I think there is some kind of emotional weariness that will take a while to abate.
On Saturday, I went to Rainbow and ran into a friend from my meditation group who said a really perfect thing after Carlos died, in 2013. (Something like, “I am staggered by the immensity of your loss.”) On Saturday, he said another perfect thing. He mentioned a friend who is a hospice social worker, or some such, and when I asked how she likes that work, he said, “She flourished! She reminds me of you. Her spirituality reminds me of yours.”
I knew it was going to be hard once CPE was over and I didn’t have a team of people pushing and pulling me along every day. I rarely experienced doubt about the path I was on during the past 15 months—I didn’t have the time or energy to. I think that may be a problem in the next couple of years, but I will try to take it one day at a time. I do know what I need to do today. And I could not possibly have been any more affirmed during CPE, what with getting to do the palliative care rotation and getting one of the special awards and all the million nice things people, including my supervisors, said throughout the year. Getting a paying job immediately also seems like a good sign.
On Sunday, for reasons I won’t bore you with, I got to see the show about the Temptations again, this time with Carol Joy, preceded by lunch at Au Coquelet, and I liked it even more the second time. It is absolutely fabulous. (When I was five years old, my favorite song was a Temptations song. We lived 45 minutes from Motown.) Our seats were excellent a week earlier, about the eighth or ninth row from the front. The second time I saw it, I sat in the second row, even closer to the action. Carol Joy loved it, too.
At the end, there was a lengthy standing ovation. I was nearly in tears of gratitude for this music being brought so vividly to life and for the mesmerizing dancing, and I could see looks of stunned wonder on the faces of some of the cast members at the outpouring of love they were receiving; some of them looked like they were nearly in tears as well.
On Monday, I went to have a TB test read for my new job and then I took BART over to the East Bay to meet my friend Ann Marie. We had a very tasty lunch at Cancun Sabor, and then we strolled onto the UC Berkeley campus—as we were arriving, 50 police officers passed us, walking in formation—and sat by a little creek and talked for a long time. A family of five raccoons walked by, down near the water. When our butts started to hurt, we walked on and found a wooden bench to sit on.
From there, we could see maybe 10 police officers standing around across the street, and periodically a helicopter hovered overhead. A TV truck arrived and raised an antenna high in the air. Then the police officers got into a van and an armored vehicle and drove toward the center of campus. I felt kind of sad for the students. Many of them are so young. It’s a shame that their campus is a place of such chaos, and at times violence.
(Click photos to enlarge.)
Free at Last
Our very last day of CPE, we turned in our badges and keys and got to leave early. In the evening, one of our peers had us all over to his place to relax and eat. The next day, a Saturday, I was planning to do this, that and the other—making good use of every single second, as I have been doing for 15 months—and then realized I didn’t particularly have to do anything that day. I could do it Monday! Or Tuesday! Or Wednesday! Instead it became a napping and reading day. Ahhhh!
On Sunday, Ann and Tom and I saw Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, at Berkeley Rep, which I loved. The show begins with a mockup of the front of the Fox Theatre in Detroit, which is where Chris Cornell played his very last show.
The following week, I was on jury duty but didn’t have to report on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. On Monday, I went downtown so my periodontist could remove the dressing over the surgery and review his handiwork. I was a little afraid to see what was under the dressing, but when I looked at it later at home, I felt pleased by the meaty, bulky redness of this gum graft. Things definitely appear to be shored up.
I did a pretty good job of getting nine hours of sleep nearly every night that I was in CPE, and of stretching each morning for 30 minutes and meditating for 45 minutes. Toward the end, there were more and more days when I did a token 10 minutes of sitting or even had to skip stretching altogether, but on the whole, this all went pretty well. I figured that once CPE was over, I would most certainly do all of these things every day, but it has been just the opposite. It turns out that maybe the hardest thing about CPE is when there’s no more CPE. That absolutely inflexible commitment was a reliable backbone for my entire program of activities. Now that it’s gone, I feel somewhat adrift, but maybe the most disrupting factor is that now I do different stuff at different times every day. My routine has vanished.
I also thought I would dispatch the bulk of my ignored-for-a-year to-do list right away, but in fact, tasks that must be done are only proliferating: stuff for County Hospital, stuff for the Very Fantastic Medical Center, stuff for applying to school, stuff for my eventual application for board certification as a chaplain, including obtaining endorsement from my faith group.
On Wednesday, I went to County Hospital for IS (individual supervision) with our leader, Clementine, and she said she had been thinking about how I might make good use of this period of training. She said it could potentially be an “easeful” time, or maybe I could move in the direction of my interests and learn some new things. Learning some new things had never crossed my mind, but she made it sound rather appealing.
The rest of my group is brand-new to chaplaincy, and so they will not be assigned to an ICU or to the ED, but Clementine said I can potentially work in those areas, or maybe I would like to work with the palliative care team, or with the prison-psych patients. All of those sound enticing. She also said maybe I can help with teaching duties. I felt inspired after our meeting, and touched by her generosity.
On Thursday, I had to go to the Hall of Justice at 8:45 a.m., where I found myself in a room with about 200 other people for jury selection for a five-week trial. Like half the people in the room, I filled out a form requesting to be excused due to hardship and sat through several rounds of hearing other people’s names called. I wrote on my form that my only income is from a part-time per diem job that will start in a couple of weeks and that I am the sole member of my household.
I had worked myself into somewhat of a frenzy—I just got a new job! I cannot be on a five-week jury!—when finally my name was called. Free at last! But also feeling slightly guilty, since I could have told my new boss that I need to work every Sunday for the next five weeks, and I could have done my volunteering at County Hospital on Fridays, since the judge said the trial would happen Mondays through Thursdays only. And I could have been a little bit late for Wednesday night training at County Hospital every week. It would have been five crappy weeks, but not the end of the world.
I walked to the soup kitchen to volunteer for the first time in a year or so, and found it not very enjoyable. I’ve become slightly allergic to being asked, by nearly every person I encounter, “Where have you been? Really? Where was your internship? What are you going to do next? Are you moving to New Mexico???” Partly it’s just the irritation of being asked the same things over and over, but there’s some deeper and not so constructive psychological thing there, too: I like to share news, not have it extracted. I notice a similar dynamic with money. I like to offer it freely, and hate to be asked for it.
I also felt abashed by all the pairs of eyes trained on me. Maybe I’ve become more used to dealing with people one on one. I found it a little difficult to have 50 people, mostly men, staring at me at every moment.
And, of course, I missed F. terribly. That is where we met. I could so clearly picture him sitting in his customary seat, with his art materials (and three or four admiring women) surrounding him. I kept glancing at that spot as if looking at it often enough would magically cause him to appear, but it didn’t work, and looking every two minutes at the front gate also didn’t. But I know I’ll get used to being there again and will eventually stop hoping he’ll appear.
I dreamed that we made a plan to meet up weekly. In the dream, I thought, “This is great! I’ll get to see F. every week.” Then I thought, “But what if something goes wrong? What if he gets angry at me? Maybe it would even be dangerous for me to spend time with him. Maybe I’d better tell him I’ve changed my mind.” In the dream, I felt frightened about what would happen when I told F. that I didn’t want to see him every week after all. It was remarkably similar to a thought process that could occur in waking life. When I woke up, I was relieved that it had been a dream and that we parted nearly a year ago. But I still feel sad about it.
On Sunday, Ann and Tom and I saw Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, at Berkeley Rep, which I loved. The show begins with a mockup of the front of the Fox Theatre in Detroit, which is where Chris Cornell played his very last show.
The following week, I was on jury duty but didn’t have to report on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. On Monday, I went downtown so my periodontist could remove the dressing over the surgery and review his handiwork. I was a little afraid to see what was under the dressing, but when I looked at it later at home, I felt pleased by the meaty, bulky redness of this gum graft. Things definitely appear to be shored up.
I did a pretty good job of getting nine hours of sleep nearly every night that I was in CPE, and of stretching each morning for 30 minutes and meditating for 45 minutes. Toward the end, there were more and more days when I did a token 10 minutes of sitting or even had to skip stretching altogether, but on the whole, this all went pretty well. I figured that once CPE was over, I would most certainly do all of these things every day, but it has been just the opposite. It turns out that maybe the hardest thing about CPE is when there’s no more CPE. That absolutely inflexible commitment was a reliable backbone for my entire program of activities. Now that it’s gone, I feel somewhat adrift, but maybe the most disrupting factor is that now I do different stuff at different times every day. My routine has vanished.
I also thought I would dispatch the bulk of my ignored-for-a-year to-do list right away, but in fact, tasks that must be done are only proliferating: stuff for County Hospital, stuff for the Very Fantastic Medical Center, stuff for applying to school, stuff for my eventual application for board certification as a chaplain, including obtaining endorsement from my faith group.
On Wednesday, I went to County Hospital for IS (individual supervision) with our leader, Clementine, and she said she had been thinking about how I might make good use of this period of training. She said it could potentially be an “easeful” time, or maybe I could move in the direction of my interests and learn some new things. Learning some new things had never crossed my mind, but she made it sound rather appealing.
The rest of my group is brand-new to chaplaincy, and so they will not be assigned to an ICU or to the ED, but Clementine said I can potentially work in those areas, or maybe I would like to work with the palliative care team, or with the prison-psych patients. All of those sound enticing. She also said maybe I can help with teaching duties. I felt inspired after our meeting, and touched by her generosity.
On Thursday, I had to go to the Hall of Justice at 8:45 a.m., where I found myself in a room with about 200 other people for jury selection for a five-week trial. Like half the people in the room, I filled out a form requesting to be excused due to hardship and sat through several rounds of hearing other people’s names called. I wrote on my form that my only income is from a part-time per diem job that will start in a couple of weeks and that I am the sole member of my household.
I had worked myself into somewhat of a frenzy—I just got a new job! I cannot be on a five-week jury!—when finally my name was called. Free at last! But also feeling slightly guilty, since I could have told my new boss that I need to work every Sunday for the next five weeks, and I could have done my volunteering at County Hospital on Fridays, since the judge said the trial would happen Mondays through Thursdays only. And I could have been a little bit late for Wednesday night training at County Hospital every week. It would have been five crappy weeks, but not the end of the world.
I walked to the soup kitchen to volunteer for the first time in a year or so, and found it not very enjoyable. I’ve become slightly allergic to being asked, by nearly every person I encounter, “Where have you been? Really? Where was your internship? What are you going to do next? Are you moving to New Mexico???” Partly it’s just the irritation of being asked the same things over and over, but there’s some deeper and not so constructive psychological thing there, too: I like to share news, not have it extracted. I notice a similar dynamic with money. I like to offer it freely, and hate to be asked for it.
I also felt abashed by all the pairs of eyes trained on me. Maybe I’ve become more used to dealing with people one on one. I found it a little difficult to have 50 people, mostly men, staring at me at every moment.
And, of course, I missed F. terribly. That is where we met. I could so clearly picture him sitting in his customary seat, with his art materials (and three or four admiring women) surrounding him. I kept glancing at that spot as if looking at it often enough would magically cause him to appear, but it didn’t work, and looking every two minutes at the front gate also didn’t. But I know I’ll get used to being there again and will eventually stop hoping he’ll appear.
I dreamed that we made a plan to meet up weekly. In the dream, I thought, “This is great! I’ll get to see F. every week.” Then I thought, “But what if something goes wrong? What if he gets angry at me? Maybe it would even be dangerous for me to spend time with him. Maybe I’d better tell him I’ve changed my mind.” In the dream, I felt frightened about what would happen when I told F. that I didn’t want to see him every week after all. It was remarkably similar to a thought process that could occur in waking life. When I woke up, I was relieved that it had been a dream and that we parted nearly a year ago. But I still feel sad about it.
I Am a Chaplain
In mid-September, just a few days before CPE ended, volunteer training at County Hospital began with a weekend intensive (six hours on Saturday, four on Sunday). We are eight people, plus our leader. We got along well right away and our leader is wonderful, but I felt a bit overwhelmed when we received our assignments and wondered if I should have started this next spring instead. I wished it weren’t overlapping with CPE. Our assignments included words that will be drearily familiar to any CPE student: reflections, verbatims, IS, goals. On the one hand, I have just done all of this for five straight units of CPE and don’t want to do any of it any more. On the other, I can do all of this with both hands tied behind my back at this point.
In the final week, I went to see my periodontist, since my dental insurance will soon be gone. I could have signed up for this via Covered California, but it was prohibitively priced. My periodontist said it appeared I would be in need of gum surgery in the next year or so. However, since I won’t have dental insurance in a year and I did have it right that minute, he suggested going ahead ASAP, so we did.
He said he was going to augment my gums with a strip of tissue taken from the roof of my mouth, or from an amenable dead person (or, if not amenable, not in a position to refuse). Having material carved out of the roof of one’s mouth is painful, so I said I’d like tissue from a dead person. I was picturing that this was going to be sewn onto my gums, and wondered if he’d make an effort to match the colors. I couldn’t figure out how it was going to bond with my own gums, but was excited that I would never be alone again! From now on, it would be me and her, or him, or them, and I’d be able to see her/him/them every time I opened my mouth.
But on the day of the procedure, my periodontist explained that he was actually going to peel the gums away from a contiguous expanse of teeth and mash in the tissue from the dead person, stretch my gums over it, and sew it all together. So no color matching required. I actually felt a little nervous before this, but it went very smoothly and was surprisingly quick, maybe half an hour or so once the area was numb. The post-surgical instructions called for taking the rest of the day off, but this was not an option.
I went to work and in the afternoon got a call from someone in HR at the Very Fantastic Medical Center who extended an offer of employment as a per diem staff chaplain! This will be one 24-hour shift a week, which is perfect, except for continuing to be away from Hammett one night every week. I wanted to work two days a week, and this is kind of an efficient way to do that. It was a boost to get an actual paid job as a chaplain before CPE even ended. It made me feel like a real chaplain.
I immediately had to start doing various onboarding tasks (online training, authorizing a background check) plus all the medical stuff for my new job (vaccinations, two TB tests, flu shot, physical exam), which I was still in the process of doing for County Hospital. I began to feel somewhat overwhelmed, with so many appointments and so many details to attend to.
The second-to-last day of CPE was the most tiring of the entire year. I spent the whole day training the person who is taking over my main unit, and couldn’t believe how exhausted I was afterward. I took a final look at my Patients I Have Seen list: 787 people. And my Deceased Patients list: 30. The latter is by no means every patient I encountered who died, but those who meant something to me or who I remember very clearly. I also did not see all of those patients after death, but I saw a lot of dead people, maybe 20 in the course of the year.
In the final week, I went to see my periodontist, since my dental insurance will soon be gone. I could have signed up for this via Covered California, but it was prohibitively priced. My periodontist said it appeared I would be in need of gum surgery in the next year or so. However, since I won’t have dental insurance in a year and I did have it right that minute, he suggested going ahead ASAP, so we did.
He said he was going to augment my gums with a strip of tissue taken from the roof of my mouth, or from an amenable dead person (or, if not amenable, not in a position to refuse). Having material carved out of the roof of one’s mouth is painful, so I said I’d like tissue from a dead person. I was picturing that this was going to be sewn onto my gums, and wondered if he’d make an effort to match the colors. I couldn’t figure out how it was going to bond with my own gums, but was excited that I would never be alone again! From now on, it would be me and her, or him, or them, and I’d be able to see her/him/them every time I opened my mouth.
But on the day of the procedure, my periodontist explained that he was actually going to peel the gums away from a contiguous expanse of teeth and mash in the tissue from the dead person, stretch my gums over it, and sew it all together. So no color matching required. I actually felt a little nervous before this, but it went very smoothly and was surprisingly quick, maybe half an hour or so once the area was numb. The post-surgical instructions called for taking the rest of the day off, but this was not an option.
I went to work and in the afternoon got a call from someone in HR at the Very Fantastic Medical Center who extended an offer of employment as a per diem staff chaplain! This will be one 24-hour shift a week, which is perfect, except for continuing to be away from Hammett one night every week. I wanted to work two days a week, and this is kind of an efficient way to do that. It was a boost to get an actual paid job as a chaplain before CPE even ended. It made me feel like a real chaplain.
I immediately had to start doing various onboarding tasks (online training, authorizing a background check) plus all the medical stuff for my new job (vaccinations, two TB tests, flu shot, physical exam), which I was still in the process of doing for County Hospital. I began to feel somewhat overwhelmed, with so many appointments and so many details to attend to.
The second-to-last day of CPE was the most tiring of the entire year. I spent the whole day training the person who is taking over my main unit, and couldn’t believe how exhausted I was afterward. I took a final look at my Patients I Have Seen list: 787 people. And my Deceased Patients list: 30. The latter is by no means every patient I encountered who died, but those who meant something to me or who I remember very clearly. I also did not see all of those patients after death, but I saw a lot of dead people, maybe 20 in the course of the year.
Newfound Respect for Respiratory Therapists
Late in August, I walked over to County Hospital (not its real name) for my interview with the director of the chaplaincy program there, which is all volunteers, except for her. I liked her right away. She described the chaplain training program as “CPE Light.” Along with the chaplains, there are volunteer eucharistic ministers and two Catholic priests assigned there, both of whom I know. I was in CPE with one last summer at the Very Fantastic Medical Center and the other was one of my peers in the yearlong clinical pastoral education program just completed.
That week, the director of spiritual care at Very Fantastic Medical Center contacted me and invited me to apply for two per diem positions, and told me to let her know when I could interview. I am planning to go to school part-time for two years starting in March, and also to volunteer as a chaplain at the County Hospital, so I can keep my skills current and also just because I have long wanted to hang around there. The final thing I was hoping to find was two paid days of chaplain work each week, so I was happy to be asked to apply for the per diem positions.
Sam had a job interview around that time that he said didn’t go very well—when they asked for examples of this or that, he couldn’t dredge them up on the spot. Learning from that, I made myself a cheat sheet of examples of various things: use of ritual, mediating conflict between others, offering meditation for physical pain, being with a patient who thought God was punishing him, and so forth. I thought the interview went quite well. The director said toward the end of our hour-long talk that she appreciated that I was ready to go with stories.
I made a goodbye flyer to give to my units at work, and smaller cards to hand out to people. Both had a photo of me on them (taken by a nurse on one of my units), and mainly expressed my thanks for the privilege of getting to work alongside such splendid people this past year.
The new crop of CPE students joined us in the final two weeks, and things became very chaotic and hectic and exciting: 14 of us plus 14 or 15 of them plus four extended-unit (part-time) students.
At morning meeting with one week to go, one of my peers shared about going to a meeting of respiratory therapists the evening before, at which he learned that a respiratory therapist goes to every Code Blue and that when it comes time for a patient to be transitioned to comfort care, it is the respiratory therapist who turns off, or turns down, the breathing support offered via ventilator!
Our mouths were, figuratively speaking, hanging open—we’d never thought about this before. It may be the respiratory therapist who is literally keeping someone alive, possibly a patient the respiratory therapist has come to know well and care about. Therefore, a respiratory therapist can opt out of being the one to turn off the ventilator, but my peer said he suspects this option is probably not exercised often. If you don’t want to do this, you might be in the wrong job. We were somewhat chagrined to be learning all of this so late in our program.
I learned another thing in those final days, a thing I’d been meaning to learn for months, which is who the people in the bright red scrubs are. They are vendors! I found this out by approaching one who was using a copy machine near the operating rooms. I asked why so many vendors are to be seen around the ORs, and he said it is because they are present when the equipment their company makes is used in a surgery, so that they can answer questions for the surgeons, or assist if there are problems, and can report useful information back to their bosses about how things actually go in the field.
That week, the director of spiritual care at Very Fantastic Medical Center contacted me and invited me to apply for two per diem positions, and told me to let her know when I could interview. I am planning to go to school part-time for two years starting in March, and also to volunteer as a chaplain at the County Hospital, so I can keep my skills current and also just because I have long wanted to hang around there. The final thing I was hoping to find was two paid days of chaplain work each week, so I was happy to be asked to apply for the per diem positions.
Sam had a job interview around that time that he said didn’t go very well—when they asked for examples of this or that, he couldn’t dredge them up on the spot. Learning from that, I made myself a cheat sheet of examples of various things: use of ritual, mediating conflict between others, offering meditation for physical pain, being with a patient who thought God was punishing him, and so forth. I thought the interview went quite well. The director said toward the end of our hour-long talk that she appreciated that I was ready to go with stories.
I made a goodbye flyer to give to my units at work, and smaller cards to hand out to people. Both had a photo of me on them (taken by a nurse on one of my units), and mainly expressed my thanks for the privilege of getting to work alongside such splendid people this past year.
The new crop of CPE students joined us in the final two weeks, and things became very chaotic and hectic and exciting: 14 of us plus 14 or 15 of them plus four extended-unit (part-time) students.
At morning meeting with one week to go, one of my peers shared about going to a meeting of respiratory therapists the evening before, at which he learned that a respiratory therapist goes to every Code Blue and that when it comes time for a patient to be transitioned to comfort care, it is the respiratory therapist who turns off, or turns down, the breathing support offered via ventilator!
Our mouths were, figuratively speaking, hanging open—we’d never thought about this before. It may be the respiratory therapist who is literally keeping someone alive, possibly a patient the respiratory therapist has come to know well and care about. Therefore, a respiratory therapist can opt out of being the one to turn off the ventilator, but my peer said he suspects this option is probably not exercised often. If you don’t want to do this, you might be in the wrong job. We were somewhat chagrined to be learning all of this so late in our program.
I learned another thing in those final days, a thing I’d been meaning to learn for months, which is who the people in the bright red scrubs are. They are vendors! I found this out by approaching one who was using a copy machine near the operating rooms. I asked why so many vendors are to be seen around the ORs, and he said it is because they are present when the equipment their company makes is used in a surgery, so that they can answer questions for the surgeons, or assist if there are problems, and can report useful information back to their bosses about how things actually go in the field.
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