What I Used to Do

It's 6:46 am and almost pitch dark. Three babies have bottles with them, the fourth is asleep on the couch where I was recently curled around her sleeping. I'm drinking from a mug of tea and eating a toasted bagel with cream cheese. It feels earlier than it is, because of the darkness. Ten years ago at this time I would have been almost to work, arriving in time to start a twelve-hour shift that started at 7.15. I didn't work every day, but each time my alarm went off at five I'd cringe and drag myself up. I was never a snoozer--just got up to pull myself into the day. I didn't like waking up that early but often as I'd be driving East across the lower deck of the Bay Bridge, I'd see the sunrise. Driving early in the morning when there are few cars on the road can feel sacred, and the sky fired with orange red violet pink made me glad I was one of the lucky ones who was awake.

I worked in the Placement department, allocating organs for transplant. Meaning talking to surgeons and nurses to help them decide which of their patients was the right fit for the liver, kidney, heart, pancreas, lungs or small bowel. Together we'd go down their lists, starting with patient number one and comparing the information of the donor to their possible recipient. How tall, how heavy, how old, did their patient have a fever, were they strong enough for the transplant surgery. It was the coolest job I've ever had. When it was busy the phones rang all the time. Text pagers making noise, fax machines going off. Terrified I'd make a mistake. A few times I did make a mistake and I had to call the doctor immediately to 'fess up. The consequences could be really bad--death of a patient, giving the wrong organ to the wrong person--so there was no trying to hide it. I learned so much in that job and for a long time it was the most important thing in my life. It was like a boyfriend--sometimes the kind you know you should break up with. That work sucked me dry and made me feel crazy. My brain would be so full of stories, needs, rules, conversations, timelines and personalities that it would take an hour or so after my shift ended for it to settle down. In other ways that job fed me. Made me feel smart, competent, like what I did mattered. I helped people get transplanted and that felt amazing, especially the times when it almost didn't happen but I kept working, working, working until it did. I could talk about it for hours At a cocktail party or a bar you pretty much win the "What do you do?" conversation. People were always interested and I loved explaining how it worked. It was a fun, stressful, exciting time.

Because of how I did that job, I eventually moved up the ladder into other jobs. As a friend and colleague once said to me, it wasn't that we'd taken a step up the ladder, it was that we'd stepped off the ladder entirely and climbed onto another one. Management was a different ballgame. And I really hated it, for the most part. I didn't realize how much I hated it until I stepped away from it. There were parts I liked--I liked solving problems, I liked being able to listen to someone who was having a hard time and help them out. I liked making decisions when I was on call, using my expertise to make cases go more smoothly. I didn't like never being able to make people happy. I didn't like not having concrete accomplishments at the end of my days. I didn't like feeling so under-qualified so much of the time. I didn't like not feeling like myself. i had a whole set of ideas of how a manger should be. Not getting too personal with colleagues. Fair and impartial. Standing up for the decisions made by upper management while also speaking up for the people who reported to me. Finding ways to walk that line. I stepped into my "manager role" and it didn't fit very well. It was exhausting and disorienting. Now that I'm not doing it anymore I can feel how I was changed by it. The way I  think, the way I work with people, the way I approach a problem. I learned a lot.

It's challenging to write about my work because. . .well, mostly because I love the mission of what we do and I never want to speak less than positively about any aspect of it. Like any job, there are things that could be better. Processes that could run more smoothly. People who could work harder. But this job is so important to so many. And so few people know anything about how it all works. I'm afraid to give even one person the wrong impression, to make them doubt or mistrust organ donation. That's ultimately why I made the decision to step away. The kids and the fact that I was losing perspective. Getting burnt out. I've worked with way too many people who stayed too long, got mired too deep into the problems instead of seeing the magic. It truly is magic. Hard-earned, holy magic that few people have the opportunity to be a part of. I will keep searching for the words to describe it the best way I can.