Through Other Eyes

After twenty something years in psychiatry, it has become like that line from the Pina Colada song, “the same old dull routine.” I do my job and then I go home, usually leaving it behind. But when it was all new, and for years after, I was totally fascinated. The first patient room I entered as a graduate nurse was that of a catatonic black female. I had never seen catatonia before; what could I do for her? Then it was trauma and dissociation, eating disorders, and the list goes straight through the various versions of the DSM. Eventually I came to wonder if I had seen it all, but in fact, new and awful stories present themselves daily, and there is no way I could possibly ever see it all. At this point I am occasionally privy to seeing the work of psychiatry through a new pair of eyes that remind me of my own before it all became commonplace. Yesterday a resident was excitedly telling a story of how an elderly female was handling her dementia. He doesn’t yet see the pattern but he soon will. And in another situation a security guard remarked, “Wow!” after a wildly psychotic young person did some really bizarre talking. “I am so glad I got to see that.” Their interest and fascination refreshes my own. I realize that my work is anything but a dull routine.