The future

What do you think we will see in the future with medicine? We seem to be making advances everyday. To me, that is a great thing. The further we advance, the better we can treat.

I have been a nurse now for eight years and just in this amount of time I have seen medications be introduced and then recalled for some side effect they weren’t anticipating. We now have a cure, a cure for hepatitis C! How wonderful is that? I have seen advances in procedures. I have been trained on new medical equipment because what we were using was considered obsolete. I can only imagine the changes nurses that have been working for decades have witnessed. I would love to just sit and listen to some of those stories!

Of all the advances there is one that I am waiting for most of all: a cure for cancer. I lost my mother and my grand-mother to cancer. I talk to patients all day that are here to get scans to check if their cancer has come back or spread. It is personal to me. I want cancer gone. I don’t want to see another child with a brain tumor. I don’t want to see another woman with breast cancer. I don’t want to see another man with prostate cancer. I wish cancer could get cancer and die.

I have this naïve little hope that in the next ten years or so someone, somewhere, is going to be the one to achieve that break through. I have this hope that I will turn on the news and hear the broadcaster say “scientists have finally found a cure for cancer!”. I keep hoping that the cure will happen in my lifetime.  I am only 35, I hopefully have plenty of years left in me. Come on scientist, do this favor for me ok?!

Humbled

Since I have become a radiology nurse I have witnessed something that has humbled me; cancer patients and the infallible strength that they have.

My role in radiology is different from my role as a bedside nurse. I am still responsible for patient safety and care but in a more indirect way. I monitor the patients during their MRI’s and I am the one that starts the IV’s before the study begins. I encounter a lot of oncology patients. In fact, I would say almost 90% of my patients some days are getting scanned to assess for metastasis, diagnose new cancer, or stage some form of cancer. These are people from all walks of life. All races, all statuses, all religions, all education levels, all ages, cancer does not discriminate.

What has humbled me is their attitudes. Almost every cancer patient I have come in contact with in my department has had a bright smile and a sunny personality. Most of them come in with the mindset that they have another battle to fight and they are going to win it. I love that! Their smile makes me smile. We end up joking and laughing during our time with each other. These are people that are getting a procedure that could potentially present more bad news and yet they walk around with a smile. I wake up bitching and moaning in the morning about having to get up so early. I complain about my knees being stiff or my back causing me pain. I rarely wake up and just thank God for being alive and being *relatively* healthy. I am going to make a real effort to try and change that. If these oncology patients can still tackle life with such vibrancy then why can’t I? Every day that I am alive is a blessing. Every day that I am blessed to not have to experience the things that these wonderful patients are having to go through on a daily basis is a gift. I am humbled yet inspired by the strength and positivity these patients demonstrate. I’m going to live for them.

Bad news

Yay, she is eating more today!

(We have some bad news)

She managed to walk from the room to the nurses’ station!

(We have some bad news)

Her labs look a whole lot better today. I think the bleeding has stopped.

(We have some bad news)

I think we may be able to move her out of the ICU today.

(We have some bad news)

She looks like she might be able to be discharged today!

(We have some bad news)

The cervical cancer is back. It’s stage four and its’ metastasized to the liver. There is nothing we can do. We can give her palliative chemo which may give her another 3-6 months or she can go palliative.

She chose to go palliative. She came home and passed away months later in her bed. I was 16. She was 41. She was my mother. October 18th will make 18 years since she passed away. It still hurts just as bad now as it did then. Fuck cancer. Fuck how it destroys people. Fuck how it destroys families. Fuck the pain it causes people. Fuck how it attacks old and young. Fuck cancer.