That was the way I first-ever met my dear nut house.
“Maria, welcome at your new place, we are looking forward to fruitful work,” said the woman with bouffant and tired eyes in the personnel department.
Thank you, I’m positive I won’t let you down.
I was introduced to the Head of Department. He was a tall lean man of about seventy with a very pleasant voice and kind eyes. He wore perfectly clean shoes, a well-pressed shirt and a suit out of fashion. He irradiated kindness and tranquility.
“Please, let me introduce myself,” he began in an academic manner, “Oleg Khamsin.”
“Very much pleased, Maria Clover. Nice to meet.”
“Now I will introduce you to the other staff members, but first let me ask you, why you chose to specialize in “psychiatrics” and are You ready to work? “I’ve been a “coterier "" since 191, here I am to the call of the heart and helping people is my life mission.”
A picture of how I first got to know that occupation as a third-year student at the Department of Psychiatry, Narcology and Medical Psychology flashed in my mind. It was love at first sight. We entered the psychiatric ward. All the classmates were scared, and it was so much interesting for me to understand, sort out and help, that I could in fact physically feel the mental pain of that woman afflicted with schizophrenia. The empathy went off the scale. For some students it was a show, while at the same time fear for the others, but for me it was a lifetime matter.
1 author’s note: a “coterier” is a medical slang for a student who, in addition to basic educational activities, goes into extra detailed studies as a member of coteries, dedicated to various medical fields.
“Oh… an answer like this is credited. Since the occupation is very much complex, it is going to be tough now and then, both emotionally and physically, but I can see you are a clear of purpose, unafraid of difficulties young lady. I admire such kind of people. Just, please, don’t plan a maternity leave yet, work on and I am confident, you will become an outstanding professional.”
“I appreciate it, Oleg, and it is so nice of you that you give me this opportunity and your confidence in my abilities.”
“The chance is always there, dear lady, though the point is to knock at every single door! But, let us have a walk around the ward.”
The ward was designed for sixty beds. It was refurbished clean and cheap with huge old windows, wind-blown through every single slit, old prewar beds and bedside tables that, together with curtains and bedspreads were definitely taken from the 40-s. Yet plain and sincere people from the staff brought in their charm. Kind and friendly, they did their best willing to calm and ease the sufferings of mental malady patients.
I was introduced to the team – thirty people of personnel. Aides and nurses, they were pure and open-soul people. Their hands belonged to the soil, since almost all of them were from the province. Their simplicity and kindness, mixed with understanding and tenderness were very much endearing. There was a friendly but strict chief nurse and three more doctors: a mad genius Ivan – infinitely literate, intelligent and sincere, but somewhat socially detached, of around thirty; Anna, the same age as Ivan, – a girl with beautiful blue eyes, exquisite figure and red curly hair. She had a graceful posture and a perfect smile, with a very warm energy and zest for life, sparkling in her eyes. The third doctor was Eleonora. A woman of between fifty and eighty with a “bun”, combed over her head, she lowered her spectacles and gave me an appraising look from head to toe, then cutely pulled her face into a smile, meaning “why on Earth did they recruit these?”. She took out an empty box of chocolates, shook it in front of me and added:
“My dear, this is what you came here to work for, beware, make sure not to develop diabetes mellitus.”
Having returned her spectacles onto the snub nose, she indifferently continued her writings. The young doctors gave me a friendly wink providing a non-verbal “let loose,” Oleg affably touched my elbow.
“Well, young and promising professional, let’s go to your workplace,” and he took me to the table opposite to Eleonora, triumphantly handing over “the key to all doors.”
“Oh, woe to me” flashed through my head.
Actually, so it was: in the following years of our joint work, I learnt of all the news from Novoselskaya Street, house 97, new one hundred and nine methods of zucchini stuffing, all the lovers by name through the teenage years, youth, adolescence and “before climacterium”, all types of canned fruit and vegetable. I heard fascinating stories about Beria and Stalin and, certainly, about “good-for-nothing youths.” I heard about her husband’s malignant habits, his smoking on the balcony and his shuffling gait, about his walking stick that he would always loose. However, I patiently endured all the copulation attacks to my pure brain in exchange for the post-Soviet psychiatric school.
I started working in the Department of Borderline and Crisis States. At first, I was very uncertain, scared… you become really scared when human life depends on your decisions. Therefore, nights with medical manuals and guides had become a norm for me.
Oleg always supported me in moments of despair.
“Maria, darling, no one is born a master,” stated he winking encouragingly and raising his finger up.
The Department of Neurotic Disorders, or rather of “Borderline and Crisis States”, where I worked, was truly an amazing place. To some it was a shelter to endure the life storms and a hideaway to the others, it was a cure-all panacea to many, yet above, it was… hmm …hard to explain It’s like when a bird breaks a wing. It flies through its life, hurt and unable to gain altitude. It catches fair winds, picks up wrong routes, and all because of the broken wing. And then, it ends up in a place where the wings are repaired and sufferings relieved. There, it is being nourished and cherished, healed and given a new chance to take off. When the wing heals completely and the bird becomes stronger, it flaps away and you have a delight to watch this flight Those were my inner experiences about the patients in our department. We dealt with treatment of depressive, adaptational, anxious, histrionic (conversion), identity and many other sorts of disorders. I was infinitely happy to observe patients’ progress and recovery. I felt that many of them, having discharged from the department and having repaired their mental wings, were gaining flight altitude…
But not everything was colored pink. There are, certainly, many disadvantages in the psychiatric practice. Starting from danger of being entangled into delirium, threats to the doctor’s life while the patient is being agitated and so on. However, many psychiatrists of grand psychiatry steered clear of neuroses (minor psychiatry), since our patients love to “tire the heart out”.
They adore to come around and take a long time to talk about their sorrows, problems, worries, flaunting that “you are being paid by the state, aren’t you?” Histrionic disorders are of a distinct category. There, you could listen to one and the same round the clock, and six hours later receive a complaint handed in via Mr. Dollton’s secretary.
The aforementioned was our Physician-in-Chief. He was a clearly overweighed man of age with gray balding hair and a coarse tongue to everything and everyone.
Paul Dollton was secretly given a nickname of “Pablo” among the medical coalition, since Columbian cartels clearly lacked one of their soldiers. Everyone was afraid of him, did not respect, but merely feared. He could easily use obscene language at daily briefings and claim all the department chiefs to be moral morons, however, he kept the entire hospital in extreme severity and was not particularly distinguished by loving kindness to the patients. Pablo was the ASScobar.
