To help people heal, “you have to let them know that you care, that they’re not alone,” says Karim, current volunteer and former patient at Bridgepoint Active Healthcare.
Karim first came to Bridgepoint last summer, when he spent seven weeks recovering here after knee surgery. His rehab was challenging, but he says one memory in particular stands out: when he was getting his staples out. He describes it as an ugly experience, but Anne, a 79-year-old volunteer who worked with him, made it a little more tolerable. She held his hand, and distracted him.
When Anne passed away, Karim took over her shift. Now he tries to do for current patients what she did for him. As a volunteer in the therapy pool, Karim’s job is to make patients comfortable and to assist the therapists with anything they need, whether it’s setting up equipment or getting water. After pool sessions, he wraps patients in heated blankets to make them warm and comfortable.
He says his own experience as a patient makes it easy for him to connect. Once he was helping a patient who was in severe discomfort. She had lots of pain and swelling. Karim reassured her that it would get better and proved it by showing her his own scar. “I often show patients my scar,” says Karim. “We compare our scars side by side. I think it helps them believe that it does get better.”
Before his time at Bridgepoint, Karim worked a desk job at a big corporation. He left his job to have his surgery, and now he volunteers. He wanted to feel the satisfaction of helping other people, and to pay forward the care he received. It also helps him to cope with his own pain, which is still there at times. Karim says he looks forward to every shift, which is a change from his last job.
“I always leave at the end of the long day feeling that I’ve made a difference,” he says. “Somehow the pain doesn’t even matter.”