Doctors Hospital of Manteca announces Hospital Week Essay Winner

MANTECA, Calif. – In honor of National Nurses Week and National Hospital & Healthcare Week, held May 6 through May 14, Doctors Hospital of Manteca invited all employees to participate in a facility-wide essay contest.  Employees were asked to write about why they chose to become a healthcare worker.  Of the many entries, one essay was particularly inspirational and touching.  Please join us in applauding Doug Lammey, Director of Cardiopulmonary Services, for submitting the following winning essay:

“I don’t believe most people choose to be healthcare workers as much as they are “called” to be.  There is something inside them that leads them in that direction.  In my case, I never thought about being a healthcare worker.  It was the military that decided it for me.  In fact, I did everything I could to not become a medic but in the military’s infinite wisdom they decided that being a medic would be what I was best suited for.  Or maybe it was that they couldn’t find anything else I would be good at and being a medic was all that was left.  I wanted to be an air traffic controller.  Again, in their wisdom they decided that that just wouldn’t be in their best interest and possibly very dangerous. 

So I was shipped off to Wichita Falls, Texas for three months of medical training.  To my astonishment, I really enjoyed it, developed the necessary skills easily, passed all the tests with flying colors and it seemed to bring out the best in me.  

My first assignment was to the large medical center at Vandenburg AFB in the intensive care unit.  Here I encountered my first real patients and I found I had a caring and compassionate side that felt fulfilled in helping people in need.  It felt good to know that what I did helped restore patients to a healthier state.  My first moving experience was taking care of a five year old leukemia patient.  We became buddies during his stay.  I saw his suffering and that of his parents.  I found an empathetic side of myself that I didn’t know existed.  I was able to comfort and console.  I took care of this child for two months until his death.  I was with him when he passed, holding and stroking his left hand while his mom stroked his forehead and his dad held his right hand.  His parents wanted me to be with them.  I had no words to ease their pain but they told me just being there meant so much to them.  I found being needed is fulfillment.  

When I was assigned to an Air Evac base in Viet Nam I experienced the horrors of what war can do to the body and to the soul.  So many young lives taken and bodies torn apart.  I had to deal with death and dying on a daily basis.  I found myself in between one and the other, trying to prevent the dying from passing into death.  Sometimes successful, sometimes not.  I found that there were limits of what I could accomplish but I was expected only to try.  And try I did.  I found the power of prayer.  I began to understand that all of my experiences were for a reason.  I was meant to be where I was.  Something greater than me kept guiding my life experiences in a certain direction.  I wanted something different.  But after four years of military medical experiences I knew I had found my calling.  It was not only what I was good at but what made me feel fulfilled at the end of the day.  Even though my patient contact is limited now by my managerial duties, that contact is still the most rewarding.   It is service to others in need.  My “choice” was not about making money or having bankers hours.  It was not about being the top salesman or productivity.  It was about giving of oneself.  It was about making a difference.  It was about caring.   I always remember the words of St. Francis of Assisi:  “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive.  It is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”  If these words are true then, for me, being a healthcare worker is not a choice.  It is a calling.”