Professional Fulfillment

I thought I would share a personal story today.  Something a little outside the normal blog post we do here at Atom Physics Staffing.  I’ve worked my way up through the hospital from being a transporter in the x-ray department, to being a CT tech, to being a board-certified medial physicist, to now owning and running at staffing company.  One of the reasons I’ve spent my career in the medical field is that I wanted to find something that was a combination of my interest in math and physics but also gave me some fulfillment at the end of the day.  Here is the story:

I recognized the name on the order.  The patient’s son had been in the hospital on multiple occasions for AIDS related problems.  It was when I worked in the x-ray department and had a lot of patient contact.  The father was always very difficult and short with the staff, but I found it hard to blame him.  Watching a person die of AIDS is horrific, and I can’t imagine what that would do to a parent.  But now, he was the patient and had a new cancer diagnosis.

One of the hospital transporters was given some oral contrast to bring up to the patient before his CT.  When the transporter got to the room, he tried to open up the bottle of contrast, but had a hard time with the seal on the bottle under the cap.  Without much thinking, he took a pen out of his pocket and jabbed it through the plastic.  The patient lost his temper at how unclean that was and yelled at the transporter to get him another clean bottle.  The transporter was shaken and back in the department.  I told him I would take up the contrast and smooth things over.

When I got to the patient’s room, he was sitting on the side of the bed.  I apologized and went over and sat down next to him and cleanly opened up the bottle and took off the seal.  I handed him the contrast, and I told him I remembered him from a few years back when he brought in his son all the time.  He was gruff and he told me that his son had died.  I told him that was horrible, and I can’t imagine going through something like that.  I told him that he impressed me how hard he had fought for his son.

He then told me that he had another son who graduated from law school this past spring.  But he collapsed when walking across stage to receive his diploma.  Brain cancer.  He only lasted a few months before he died too.  I just looked at him, and then this big burly angry man burst into tears and cried on my shoulder.  After a few minutes he composed himself, and I put my arm around him.  I told him how sorry I was to hear that, and we would do everything possible to help him with his own cancer diagnosis.  I told him to drink up his contrast, and I left the room.

I didn’t need to go up to that patient’s room that day.  It was certainly a little out of ordinary for me to do so as a physicist.  But it was one of the most impactful things that ever happened to me.  That story will stick with me the rest of my life, and gave me a perspective on the effect we have on our patients.  It is easy for the hospital to become routine because it is our workplace, but for many of the lives we touch, being at the hospital may be one of the worst days of their lives.  There is a sense of humanity that brushes us in this job that is hard to quantify in professional fulfillment.