The emergency doctor

Before Dagmar Zillig leaves the house every morning she makes breakfast for her pet hedgehogs. She keeps eighteen of them in her cellar – without her hospitality, they wouldn't survive the winter. Dagmar gives them cat food, and then heads off to work at the German Red Cross rescue station in Rostock. She usually works the early shift, which starts at 7a.m.

Dagmar Zillig rarely gets to go to the cinema, but when she does, she usually picks a film about animals. Now 52, she says her love of animals goes back to her childhood. She grew up in a former abbey close to the town of Chorin in Brandenburg. Her father was a forester.

"I loved playing in the forests," she remembers. "I was never really interested in toys, but I just loved the countryside." Today, she's still very much the outdoor type, with a long list of hobbies that includes sailing, diving, and traveling. She also volunteers with the German Maritime Search and Rescue Service.

A life by the sea

Dagmar always knew she wanted to be a doctor. In 1975 she moved to Rostock to study medicine, eventually qualifying as a surgeon. In 1996 she began working for the German Red Cross. She's only one of three female doctors working for the rescue services.

"It's not an easy job for women," she says, pointing out that the work she does is very incompatible with family life. Dagmar herself has no children. She wanted to, but "it wasn't possible in the early days of my career, and then it was too late," she says.

Dagmar's husband is a ship engineer. He spends four months at sea, then two months at home. The couple met while sailing, and despite their demanding jobs, they know they can always count on each other. "When my father fell ill, my husband took six months leave without pay," says Dagmar.

Her parents were moved to Rostock when they both needed round-the-clock care. First her mother died, then her father suffered a brain hemorrhage after Dagmar had looked after him for nine years. She was able to communicate with her father, despite the diagnosis.

"Everyone told me that he couldn't understand me, but I knew he could," she says.

Just as Dagmar is explaining her belief that care and affection have an important role to play in medicine, the alarm goes off: A patient has suffered an allergic reaction to a medicine he's been taking.

Dagmar is gentle but confident as she goes about treating him. "The main thing is to show patients that I'm here to help and that everything is going to be alright," she says. Her patient responds well to her kind and down-to-earth manner, and soon starts visibly relaxing.

Never lonely

Since her father died almost one year ago, and with her husband at sea, Dagmar tends to come home to an empty house. But she says she's never lonely: She's planning a holiday with her husband and she's already working on a lecture she'll be giving at an upcoming seminar. And there are always the hedgehogs. Dagmar also says that she sees a lot of her neighbors.

"My doorbell's always ringing," she sighs. "There are two other doctors living here, but whenever something happens, they all come to me!"

"I'm never really off-duty," she says. "Doctors never are."

Author: Luna Bolivar Manaut (jp)
Editor: Rina Goldenberg