My time as a pharmacist’s assistant helped me overcome my anxiety
Version 0 of 1. If you watch an orthopaedic surgeon straddling a patient on the operating table, swinging a hammer into their pelvis with all his power, it becomes an indelible image. I stood, somewhere between the ages of 16 and 17, at the very edge of an operating theatre watching a hip replacement. Bone fragments settled on surgical drapes like confetti; a scene that, without kind voices and lack of murderous intent, could have been from a Dario Argento film: repulsive, abject, thrilling. I had designs on being a doctor for as long as I could remember. For my GCSE work experience I worked in the pharmacy department of my local private hospital for two weeks, helping with daily deliveries and stock-checking drug cabinets on the wards. They gave me a white coat and I felt like a peacock. One day a lady said: “Excuse me, doctor, where are the toilets?” You’re having a laugh if you think I corrected her. So efficient was my pillbox counting, the pharmacist (a man of no more than 45 but with waves of brilliant white hair) asked me to stay on for the summer. He needed help while the real assistants navigated holidays and childcare. If I recall, he paid me £20 a day. More than enough. My responsibilities were elevated, excitingly, to providing assistance in the preparation of chemotherapy bags in a small, lab-like room requiring hairnets. (When I say “assistance” I mean “spraying things with sanitiser”, but who cares for semantics?) I also did stock-checks in theatres. Not for the powerful drugs – those were under lock and key – but for the cabinets full of big, wobbly bags of saline solution. Each time I went into a theatre I had to change into scrubs. Each time I became Dr Corday from ER. These theatre trips didn’t always mean encountering live surgery, but when they did my counting would strangely become less efficient. You can’t see much of the “field” when you’re 15 feet away, but you can see blood flooding a suction hose or glinting tools disappearing into the wetness of an opened body. Seeing people at their most vulnerable and totally reliant on others planted the seed of wanting to help others You might question the appeal of all this as a summer job for a teenager; even one like me who had always been fascinated with the inner workings of humans. I went on to waitress through sixth-form to earn money for Bacardi Breezers, of course, but this was an important experience for me in many ways. I don’t subscribe to fate, but being asked to work in the hospital that summer gave me not only the opportunity to see medicine up close but to do some private healing. Because I’d almost died that school year. My gut had literally exploded after my appendix became infected. Sepsis had roared through my body. I spent a considerable amount of time in hospital flitting from one corporeal dissociation to the next. As I’ve learned in therapy, appendix-gate was probably the mainspring of the anxiety I have lived with ever since. I have also learned that by exposing ourselves to what we fear we can gradually overwrite distress with new patterns of thought. Looking back, I like to ascribe intelligence to my subconscious and wonder if I was trying to reclaim meaning of some kind; putting myself into an environment that would not only further my career interests, but also re-expose me to what I encountered during the most frightening weeks of my life: strip-lit corridors, IV stands, beeping machines, the ferrous tang of iodine, the recurring image of a body – my body – unconscious and being invaded by people I didn’t know. Only this time it wasn’t my body. I was a rational observer. This job fuelled an already burning fascination into the human condition, what happens when things go wrong and what we need when it does. The pharmacist responded to my rapid-fire questions with grace and I still remember things he told me about cells. But there was something stirring about the emotion of it all, too. My summer of cutlery: how packing Sheffield steel checked my privilege | Catherine Taylor Seeing people at their most vulnerable and totally reliant on others, being privy to the micro-interactions that were soothing or empowering, planted the seed of wanting to help others. I studied English literature at university because I didn’t get the grades for medical school and went straight into journalism. However, it was probably inevitable that I’d return to healthcare in some form. Nineteen years on, I am training as a psychologist with a major interest in the mind-body relationship, and still think about that hospital often. I think about watching nurses angling patient’s chairs towards the breeze from an open window, overhearing reassurances given to those anxiously awaiting surgery and the patient answering of questions. My eyes were opened to the kind of language and often basic behaviours – eclipsing the medical setting – that can make a person feel heard, safe and understood when they are scared or wounded. We all need to be held sometimes. Even if that holding is with phrases as fundamental as “It’s OK” or “What do you need?” Our formative experiences can make the business of accepting help difficult, even when we need it most. My home life at the time of my rupturing innards was difficult, meaning my emotional needs in my recovery were not met. This left a core unease of being truly vulnerable with others. I didn’t address my anxiety for a very long time. Now I largely get on well with my mind and have the immense privilege of learning how to help support others in understanding and managing their distress. I consider that summer to have been an important part of the trip here. The flying splinters of pelvis were a bonus. • Eleanor Morgan is an author and is training to be a psychologist Mental health What my summer job taught me Work & careers Hospitals Anxiety Health comment Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on WhatsApp Share on Messenger Reuse this content |