What Doctors Take Home With Them
I often felt that my physician-husband wasn’t with us, that he never fully came home from the hospital.
I had the sense, though couldn’t name it then, that he’d brought others home with him; other families’ grief, fear, dysfunction and love.
It was as though their stories clung to his clothes like the perfume of another woman or a crying child hanging onto his leg.
He dragged or carried them home. It it felt like there was a crowd with us, clambering for his attention.
When I asked him, “How was your day?” it wasn’t meant to elicit a reflexive answer like “Fine” or “Okay.”
I really meant, “Please introduce me to these people you brought home with you.”
But he wasn’t a story-teller and, it is only now, years later, that I have the words for what it was I really yearned for.
Many of us carry others around with us, of course. Not just doctors.
But if you’re in a “helping profession” — doctors, nurses, therapists, coaches — if you’re not careful, you’ll have hordes of people clinging to your psyche and your heart.
They might crowd out your loved ones and even your own self.
The challenge is how to keep caring, while also learning to keep the stories of other people’s lives from clogging your experience of being alive in your own body. If you can’t set other people’s stories aside, even for a few hours, you can never really be home. Without a break, we will have nothing left to give to those we truly love.
Does your spouse ask you questions that you can’t seem to really answer?
Is there a space hanging between you when you get home from the hospital?
Do your patients “follow” you home, cling to your psyche in some way?
Maybe you don’t have to check your days’ experiences at the door. Next time someone asks you, “How was your day?” try something other than “fine” or “okay.” Find a way to bring them into your home. Try introducing the people who you bring home with you. Really talk about your day. Tell your story. Stories are bridges between where you go each day and where you return to each evening. The bridge between community and the things you keep inside. This is intimacy.