Long Walk Out of the Woods by Adam B. Hill

Author:Adam B. Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Published: 2019-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

The Prodigal Son

After finishing up my assignment in Oklahoma, I came back with something to prove, a prodigal son returning home. Through some old connections, and a few concessions, I received the opportunity to train again at Indiana University Medical Center with a plan to complete a one-year fellowship in palliative medicine. My addiction history was open for a world of insurance carriers, policy makers, and hospital administrators to see. The colleagues who knew about my addiction acted afraid of me, as if my presumed fragility required delicate handling. One person told my wife that they were afraid to talk about going out for “happy hour” in front of me, because they didn’t want to trigger a relapse. For the most part people had good intentions, but this secretive kid glove condescension only yielded power to the disease. And good intentions or not, when people treat you differently because of a disease, well, they still treat you differently.

Several meetings were held in quiet offices to determine my “fitness” to take on a new work endeavor. It didn’t seem like a great sign that I had to meet with four different deans just for a one-year training position at the hospital. In any other scenario I doubt they would have even known who I was, but in this situation they all had their eyes on me. I had a history, I carried a label, and I couldn’t hide it. Yet I approached each day as though it was my only opportunity to prove the doubters wrong, and I knew that although I couldn’t control what other people said or did, I could control how I reacted.

In the first few months back, I made several professional friends who were in their own recovery programs, and another with her own harrowing tale of working with a serious medical condition. She didn’t know what hit her for weeks and then months, while she continued to work day after day through declining health. She was a tall, middle-aged woman, a diligent and hardworking colleague with a brisk walk that captured her work ethic. She never slowed down, always running toward the next professional obstacles and then effortlessly clearing them as she climbed up the rungs of accomplishment. Then she started to develop symptoms, mild at first but worthy of notice. In her daily routines, she started to feel more and more tired, with an odd sense of breathlessness during her normal hospital rounds.

Over the next few weeks she started to sleep longer, finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning, and eventually had trouble falling asleep at night too. But she continued to work as several more weeks went by, and then one day found herself slumped over a stairwell railing, catching her breath before walking over to see a patient. In the days before she was finally rushed to the emergency room, her ability to focus on tasks had slowly dissipated, like smoke rolling off a freshly extinguished flame. Her

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