Seeing a picture of life-long alcoholism

There was no reason why I should have missed the application deadline for work abroad this past summer. Though there are usually issues in the periphery that lead me to distraction and preoccupation, I have this terrible tendency to be on top of 99 percent of my obligations at hand, while completely forgetting a crucial few. The point of that insight into my life was to explain how I ended up working in a hospital this summer, in the heart of cow-country Ohio. Despite the complete contradiction between what I wanted to be doing and what I was, I ended up gaining some interesting information and some new perspectives on life.

The internship I had was based at Ohio State University hospital, where I worked with doctors of a variety of fields. The basis of the job was geriatric research, where I worked on two different research projects by collecting and entering data. For the second half of the time I spent there, I basically "shadowed" different specialists who typically saw a lot of geriatric patients.

Most days weren't that interesting, to be honest. It was mostly retirees getting their monthly or yearly check-ups, changing medications and having minor physical examinations. There was one day, however, when I saw a case that stuck in my mind for the rest of the summer.

I was working with a neurologist who happened to be seeing one particular patient. This patient, while she was only in her mid-forties, was living in a nursing home with much older adults. I was surprised by that fact, because she did not appear to be in any way physically handicapped or unable to take care of her basic needs. And upon listening to the initial discourse between her and the doctor, I couldn't tell that she had an overriding mental disorder (i.e. mental retardation or dementia.) However, I came into the interview with the knowledge that this particular patient had been an alcoholic since the age of nineteen. Basically, she had hardly any short-term memory capabilities left. The day-to-day practices of getting up, taking medications, making a basic meal and taking care of bills were completely beyond her capabilities. And she was younger than most college students' parents.

Imagine not having the ability to remember any conversation you had or person you'd met in the course of a couple days. Unless you wrote down most of the actions and events you experienced during the day, you wouldn't remember them. Every fraction of an hour would be like a new day of an muddled and foggy existence. Imagine getting home and not knowing what you had done all day, what you needed to do for the next, or what you wanted to do in the meantime.

All that happened to be true of this particular woman. The direct cause of this ailment was, in fact, her alcoholism. Alcoholics typically have poor nutrition because they sustain themselves by drinking, since that is their focus and their desire. As a result, their bodies are done irreparable damage. The doctor I was working with explained to me that the severe vitamin deficiency she had put her body through for so many years had contributed to her loss in memory-making capability. As he said, vitamin B1 - which doctors and researchers believe is essential to the nervous system and the memory-making process - is also used by the body to break down alcohol. So the minuscule amount of B1 she had been getting could not fulfill her body's functional needs, hence her very poorly operating memory system. Many parts of her body were damaged because they did not have the nutrients necessary to grow or repair the damage done by alcohol.

Needless to say, this case experience was the defining moment of my summer internship. Not only did I start to review the way I treated my body, but I thought about many of my friends who flouted the same attitude of invincibility as I had most of my teenage life. As with all chance meetings in life, there is a valuable lesson passed through the words and motions of the encounter that has a life all its own.

From person to person, the grain of truth travels on and lives forever. Take from it what you will; I'm giving it to you.