That time I worked in a stroke rehab clinic
Terrible jobs I used to have - episode 5
In the summer of 1995 I had turned up in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, having just graduated from University but knowing I was nowhere near ready to start being a grown-up yet. Having spent my third year working in Bavaria, I knew it was somewhere I’d be happy to spend more time, so in the absence of any more detailed plan, I thought I’d head for the mountains and see what happened.
I’d therefore said goodbye to my friends and caught a one-way, thirty-hour bus from Northampton to Munich and a train from there to Garmisch, leaving roughly fifty quid in my pocket. I did in fact think I had a job to go to – I had misunderstood a letter from a hotel in Oberstdorf and was expecting to work there for the autumn, but when I phoned home to check in, another letter had arrived, missing me by just a day, clarifying that they’d only said it was a place one could work, not that they were offering an actual job. Hmmm.
Phone calls and letters by post – it’s a miracle anyone got anything done before smartphones, isn’t it?
Anyway, I had 36 hours to find myself a job before the money ran out. Resourcefulness kicked in and I spent the first day with a local hotel directory in hand, going around every hotel in Garmisch, knocking on doors and asking for work.
By the end of the day I’d walked many miles and tried 25 places with no luck. But one hotel had suggested going to the local Arbeitsamt (job centre) and signing on there. So I did, and sure enough, after exactly the amount of form-filling you’d expect, they found an opportunity at a local guest house working in the kitchens – room and food included. Just the job.
I spent nine weeks working there before, like many other places in Bavaria, they closed for November (that month being the shoulder season and hence the best time for hoteliers to take their own holidays). I jumped on a bus to the nearby town of Hindelang, where I’d spent much of 1994. I still had some friends there and figured I would find a floor to crash on until I could work out what came next.
Somehow, I didn’t make the connection between having to leave my Garmisch job and a likely dearth of jobs in Hindelang, but of course, all the hotels and guest houses there were also closed until December. The only work going was at a large, geriatric stroke rehabilitation clinic which had opened a couple of years earlier. This huge, specialist hospital seemed to take patients from across Bavaria, all of whom were recovering (or in some cases, failing to recover) from a stroke or other serious medical misfortune.
It’s fair to say this was a leap for me – all of the many jobs I’d done up to this point were in factories, warehouses or were related to catering in some way. I’d never gone near the medical or care professions and had no desire to. But work was work, and the alternative was an early return to England – and I figured a bad day in the mountains is still a day in the mountains. So I put on my politest German, oversold my skills and landed another terrible job.
As usual, my role was on the lowest rung. It was officially ‘Pflegeassistent’ (Care Assistant) but was really all the jobs that the other staff didn’t want to do, or just needed help with. It could be unloading deliveries, moving things, applying medication in unspeakable places, literally anything. Often it was cleaning – rooms, equipment, patients – there was always something to clean.
One of the more pleasant duties was just sitting with a patient or two and keeping them company, having a chat, helping them reminisce. Again, it had never previously occurred to me that this was a role for people, or the simple fact that many of the patients would not talk to anyone at all if we didn’t make the effort to bring them coffee and sit by their bedside.
These weeks in the clinic were the first time I’d genuinely realised that old people were just people that had become old, rather than some hideous experiment. I was the worst person to be working in care, lacking empathy by default and really just interested in being in the Alps, whatever that meant.
But everything at the clinic was done with care and humanity - the unspeakable indignities that some of the residents would endure in their later hours were calmly and professionally handled by the wonderful staff, who took everything in their stride and never forgot that these were people, not just patients.
I found myself genuinely interested in the backstories of the residents, and was surprised to find they had had careers, families, ambitions, that they had achieved great things and had some incredible memories – or in some cases, no memories, but enough people around them who could remember what they had once done. A chat would often bring a story to the surface.
Many were World War Two veterans, which presented an interesting dynamic to someone who had grown up in Coventry, an English city that was carpet-bombed by the Luftwaffe. Of course, the Allied forces did the same to Dresden and many other German cities (in fact, Coventry is twinned with Dresden to this day). I learned quickly to not assume that every veteran was in any way repentant of their past – some seemed resentful that they hadn’t finished the job they had set out to do.
I had come across this a year previously while working as a night-porter in a hotel in the same village – I stood in one night a week for the regular porter, a Herr Braun. He showed me the ropes on the first night and once our rounds were done, we got to chatting. When I mentioned Coventry, he looked uncomfortable and said “ah, Coventry is very bad for us”. He went on to explain that he had been an actual bomber conducting the raids on my home town – he’d actually carried out some of the attacks that took the roof off the old Cathedral and flattened much of the city.
We could both see what a bizarre situation this was – he was over 80 by this time and although he still had some prominence as a local right-wing figure, he recognised that this was a story from history, not something to shape our work together. But he was far from alone in the views that he held in the area. And we’d learned about ‘people like him’ at school, although the reality, in the flesh, was quite different.
These were just the kind of stories that would emerge during chats in the clinic – everyone seemed to have had an interesting and busy life, and many were interested in how I’d ended up there. I spent an afternoon teaching some jovial but frail men how to pronounce English words properly (it’s Manchester, not Menchester). I realised that most were just getting on with their lives when they first became ill – they weren’t, in fact, born old and infirm.
Karl, the clinic supervisor, was made to be a carer and greatly cared about the people under his responsibility. He was patient with me as a useless foreigner, and was careful to not assume that I knew how things worked.
He also recognised that the bizarre Bavarian accent was difficult to understand, and tried to speak clearly to me when explaining things. He, of course, had the ability to break into perfect BBC English if he really needed to, but also respected that I was trying to make my way in Germany, and helped me to learn.
Karl would also occasionally break into ballroom dancing in idle moments – “come on Helga, let’s dance a nice mambo” he would say, accosting a nurse and pirouetting her down the corridor, nimbly avoiding the piles of sheets and medication trolleys, before resuming his duties as though nothing had happened.
By this point in my life, I knew I was happy to do any job if it got me where I wanted to be (or kept me there) – and this has stuck with me even thirty years later, the knowledge both that I will always find work if I need to, but also that I don’t want to end up doing these kind of jobs again now that I’m lucky enough to do something more interesting.
But there were certainly times in the clinic, when I did just think ‘what are you doing here?’ Generally when I was applying pile ointment to a patient, or particularly when clearing up a room after some particularly violent haemorrhaging. We are usually lucky enough to be sheltered from the undignified ends to many people’s lives, at least until later in our own lives, but it was a timely reminder to do everything you can, while you can.
Realising what you definitely don’t want to do can be as valuable a steer in life as realising exactly what you do. And these were the weeks when I realised that care work, the medical profession and anything related were just not for me. I can completely understand how it can be someone’s passion, and I’m sure there are few more rewarding callings for the right person. But I’m not that person.
I was only there for seven weeks in the end – my next role was already lined up (with a proper, written confirmation this time). And after over four months abroad, the prospect of a pie and chips on return home had never looked so enticing.
Verdict: Not a job I would have otherwise chosen, but sometimes you just need to take the work that’s available. I was able to spend another lovely autumn in the Bavarian Alps, made some new friends and learned a lot about myself and others. I found huge respect for everyone that worked there – and all those who spend their working hours caring for others. I may even have developed a little empathy.