Bask

I sometimes think I need a complete career change after nearly twenty years of sifting through the contents of people's heads. It's not always nice in there, even if the outcomes are usually good after the sifting has been done. But I'm tired, after clocking up over 15,000 clinical hours, and worried that I might be getting a bit cynical.

Little moments like the one that just happened do help though. I was stopped on the seafront by a woman I last saw nine years ago, when I worked in another town. She'd been a long-term patient and I'd got to know her very well - and from time to time, as you do, she'd cross my mind and I'd wonder how she was getting on with her life.

Very well, it seems. She looked healthy and happy and was full of the energy that had been sapped from her by repeated life knocks when we first met. "And I never, ever forgot the things you said to me," she told me, "especially when you advised me to sort out the situation with my sister and warned me things would get much worse if I didn't. They did get much worse, but because I'd taken on what you said and sorted it out, the damage was about a millionth of what it might have been. I just wanted you to know that."The situation with her sister had been serious and dangerous and very, very strange. It had taken some getting to grips with, for her and me (and, her sister).

So she shook my hand and went back off to resume the rest of her life. And I came home and put the kettle on, and felt a bit better about what I do for a living. Helping people to kick-start their lives has its place after all. On days when I feel like retraining as a Particle Physicist, I must remind myself.