From Sunday, right through to Thursday, I ugly cry between six and seven. This happens without exception, and I assure you, without any sense of self-respect. Yes, each night, during each episode of Master Chef Australia, I weep with such vigour that we have to turn up the sound on our television.
My long-suffering husband has stopped asking about the logic behind my tears. He figures that because we operate in a hugely charged emotional setting, with people dying, hurting, crying, mourning, battling, and suffering, I should realistically cry at work. It makes sense to get tearful when a young mother dies or when a patient battles to walk after losing a leg. And yet, I save my tears for when it makes no sense at all. A home cook fails in an elimination challenge, someone’s parfait doesn’t set, or when an Australian mom doesn’t get her beautiful food plated up in time.
I’m rather fond of said long-suffering husband, so I thought I’d do a bit of research to confirm I am not going loopy. In doing so, I learned some new termonology. Apparently, what we do here at the lodges is “intense emotional labour.” When you are forced to remain calm, kind, indifferent, practical and reassuring, while witnessing intense grief, decline and suffering daily, you automatically “postpone” your own emotions.
So, when poor Casper had an issue with his white grapes during a pressure test (nogal during the letters from home competition) and had to leave the Master Chef kitchen, it was emotionally evocative to me, but not personally demanding. (I never cook with grapes, I’ve never been to Australia and I could definitely not save Casper). Even though Casper’s loss is trivial to me, and it is purely entertainment, it must remind me, deep down inside, of all the difficult moments that form part of my day-to-day life.
Once you are home, and safe, and off duty, your nervous system finally allows emotion through. My blubbering is not always when things don’t work out. I bawl just as loudly when a home cook wins, or if a souffle comes out beautifully. Maybe that is because there are so many wins at work too, and far more opportunity for joy than sorrow. But I have to contain these moments of elation, as it would look weird if I skipped around all day after a patient’s wonderful recovery, while another patient might just have received a terrible diagnosis.
I told the long-suffering husband all about this research so that he could understand my daily breakdowns, and I gave him a list of all the possible reasons I am celebrating, laughing, and weeping vociferously through Master Chef this week.
- On Thursday, one of our long-term patients, who is ventilated, celebrated his 40th birthday. When he was discharged from hospital six months ago, none of the medical teams believed he would ever be weaned off the ventilator. On his birthday, he spent six hours and twelve minutes breathing on his own. During these times, we can also hear his voice. His family from overseas came for his birthday, and it was wonderful to see him so full of hope. He told me that he plans to attend his niece’s birthday in Austria next year. And… I actually believed he would.
2. I spent an hour, with the help of Google Translate, discussing why a patient should not be having energetic intercourse while awaiting surgery. Said patient has the bottom half of his leg in a circular external fixator- fancy word for big contraption resembling a cage, usually after a patient has had a massive trauma to a limb. So, in very bad Portuguese, I had to translate why he should abstain and why most certainly, not do these activities with two ladies at a time!
Yes, these are exactly the conversations I never thought I would have.
3. One of our (very much legal) staff members spent a night in jail just because the police thought they could scare her and get some money out of her.
My heart breaks at how cruel people are.
4. A patient with us for end-of-life care has surprised us all by going from just about comatose to requesting a beer with lunch, going outside to sit in the sun and has even started going on outings and requesting burgers and chips for dinner. We know the underlying conditions have not changed, but it is so lovely to witness these unexpected weeks his family has now gained.
5. On Thursday we had four deaths. They were all expected, but we can never forget that each death, although gentle and dignified, was the loss of a mother, a son, a partner.
Each loss takes up space in all of us, and we need to hold this for the families.
- I had a cup of coffee with a beautiful and very tired young mother. Her grandmother has end-stage kidney disease and her mom has terminal breast cancer. She is trying to manage all this while showing up to fetch kids on time and pack lunches. Allowing her half an hour to receive some care instead of giving it felt like the biggest gift we could give her.
7.We have an elderly French patient who is with us after an amputation. He kept explaining that he lost his son. He got more and more upset. Eventually he was hysterical. I thought he clearly meant “he lost his leg.” Eddie, our French carer, thought he was just confused as a result of medication. It turned out that both Eddie and I were wrong. After much Googling, phone calls, and tears (mine, the patient’s, and Eddie’s), we figured it out. The patient’s 19 year old son followed after our patient was medivacked from Chad. Somehow, because the son’s English was also limited, he got lost. He ended up on the other side of Pretoria. Long story short, we found the son. We Ubered him to us and he is staying with his dad. He’s a delight. No one is crying anymore.
- A young daughter came back to us for end-of-life care after she had stayed with us before. We all love her, but what stays with me about this family is how they support and love each other after decades of exhausting caring and financial drain. We see families who turn on one another in a heartbeat over the tiniest of misunderstandings, or fight about money. To see a family united like this after such an unfair hand of cards makes you grateful and humbled in ways one blog could never contain.
9.Our very special maintenance manager got an opportunity to go and work overseas. Leonard has been part of this family for a long time, and thinking of losing him devastates me. At the same time I’m bursting with pride for him.
I remind myself that we can feel joy and loss in the same moment.
- I am pathetically beside myself because both our resident black collared barbet and a couple of crested barbets returned after disappearing for almost eight months. I took their disappearance personally, and having them back thrills me.
In fact, I was so happy about their return that the staff were rewarded with KFC (the irony of us eating birds whilst celebrating the return of others was however lost on me).
So, I have decided to stop feeling embarrassed about my nightly wailing. From now on, I am selling it to my long-suffering husband as being entirely his fault. I clearly feel safe with him and therefore I can let go of all we have to hold in the day. For that hour I can put down what we have to carry. I am going to celebrate my nervous system’s rather bizarre way of reminding me that underneath all the laughter, death, pragmatism, challenges, hope and heartbreak, I remain completely human. And sometimes, apparently, the best way to remind me of this fact, is a perfectly plated soufflé.