Tales from the Nuthouse: Lest You Think I have a Really Suck Job

[wolf]

You never know what kind of impact you're going to have on someone.

There's this guy, I'll call him Dave.

Dave is a classically crazy guy. Hears voices, has difficulty understanding and participating in interpersonal interactions, all that, but he's a nice guy.

As I went into work last Wednesday, who do I walk past in the lobby, but Dave.

After I was on the clock, I sat out on the couch to chat with him for a little while, catch up on how things where going, and all. I wasn't working with him, just chatting.

He remarked, as a lot of our frequent flyers do, on how long I'd been working at the nuthouse, and started talking about the first time we met. He remembered a lot of details about that day on the unit, which for me, honestly, was just one of a bunch of days on the unit. I mean, I remembered Dave and all, but no real specifics. He mentioned that I had been wearing a hat from a concert that I had gone to ... I remember the concert, and I had remembered the hat. What I didn't remember was this ...

He remarked that it was common in those days (about 16 years ago) for nursing staff members to spend their time on the unit talking to nursing staff members, except for the time that they were supposed to spend interviewing their caseload of patients. What Dave said was that I didn't do that. I spent my time talking to the patients ... and when he asked me about that, I told him that I wasn't there to talk to my cow orkers, I was there for the patients, who came to the nuthouse because a lot of the time they didn't have anyone else. He said that was very important for him ... that he knew that I really cared.

So, you never know how you're going to touch people. Be mindful of that.