Thursday, August 4, 2022


It's been raining all morning, pissing down raining.  We need the rain and the plants are happy but it's also gray and cool outside.  I don't feel like being outside in weather like that.  

I'm back on the floor and dealing with my patients again.  A woman yesterday, seventy-two, who had her central line removed six weeks after having it put in.  She said the chemo was too awful and she didn't want to feel like that in the short time she had left.  I told her, I think I would feel the same way.

Another woman, terrified of having a central line put in.  When it was done, she was shocked at how well it went.  She felt a bit of pain with the freezing needles but otherwise it was fine.  She left happy and pleasantly surprised.  I imagine she slept well last night.

Many new patients and some old patients.  A patient in yesterday for a lung biopsy, both he and his brother have bowel cancer and I remember when he first started treatment.  His cancer has spread to his lungs.

So many patients that I used to see when I first started in cancer care eleven years ago, no longer come for scans.  A part of me likes to think they are okay, at home, enjoying life but another part of me knows the truth, they are dead.


There is a lot of grief in our building, in the world really.  The grief of one person is just a microcosm of the world's grief.  There is so much suffering in the world, it feels almost suffocating at times and yet we endure.  Humans are amazing really, when you think about it.  We keep going, even in the face of death.  

I'm actually not sad today, despite this post.  I took a course at work not that long about grief and trauma.  It was quite interesting and made me think about grief in a whole new light.  We grieve so many things over our lifetimes; the loss of a city, the loss of friends, the loss of our youth, the loss of what we thought we had, the loss of health, the loss of loved ones, the loss of our dream child and our dream parents.  Acceptance is hard and requires a lifetime I realize now.   

I want to study grief I think, when I retire.  I think, I believe that we need to address grief and loss in our health care system, especially among health care professionals.  These past two and a half years of the pandemic have only shone a light on what health care professionals have always dealt with, death and loss in so many forms.  I have lost so many patients over the years, which makes me sound like an awful nurse I know, but I still carry so many of them with me, memories of them.  It's how we live on in part but it's also hard to carry at times, for those who do the remembering.

Nurses need to be able to share their grief with other nurses and even with families.  We need to find a better way of dealing with grief in health care and I would like to be a part of that.  

I guess time will tell.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.


26 comments:

  1. I have nothing but admiration for the medical staff who face these situations every day with such compassion. I know I could never do your job and I'm grateful that there are people like you who willingly take up the challenge! Thank you!

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    1. Nurses need to find a better way to do deal with our grief though, because what we're doing now is causing burn out.

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  2. Most of us aren't taught to deal with grief and many are unprepared for the losses that are inevitable. They feel picked upon when tragedies happen because they don't understand that death hits all of us; we either die first or we lose our loved ones and have to deal with that. Losing two younger brothers in my twenties and my husband at 56 has made me (too?) realistic about the world.

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    1. Life is full of suffering. I think our ancestors knew this better than we do today.

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  3. You have a hard job, I admire you for doing it.

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  4. This is a thoughtful and though provoking post. It takes special people to do what you do.

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    1. Not so special, just someone who has seen a lot of suffering.

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  5. "Nurses need to be able to share their grief with other nurses and even with families. We need to find a better way of dealing with grief in health care and I would like to be a part of that."

    Yes. I see you as a vital part of that.

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    1. I would like to set up a program in my own hospital to support nurses.

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  6. You're so right. I think there is a common feeling in the medical profession that feeling or expressing grief is not wise or acceptable. This can't really be healthy. And it's not helpful for patients or families.

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    1. I cry with my patients, I share with them, I am human with them. They don't seem to mind.

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  7. A worthy and thoughtful goal.

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  8. Western society doesn't do death and grief well. We ignore it as if it will never happen and when it does we are surprised and pretend all is well. Until it isn't. Your post has made me realise how poorly we were supported when I worked in oncology. There was support if we asked but we were too busy and didn't want to be seen to be weak etc. That poem strikes a chord.

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    1. And it's not only death, but suffering and grief that we try to deny. Life should always be happy. Life is not always happy and we have to figure out a way to grieve the bad shit and find a healthy way to carry it with us.

      I just had a thought, I wonder about nurses all making a block for a quilt to remember our patients and then using those quilts to keep other patients warm. Hmmm.

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  9. Please send us some of your rain.
    My respect for your work goes out to you.

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    1. Thanks. We had a very cold, wet spring and then heat which seems to make the garden happy. My tomatoes are heavy with fruit and I have one pumpkin that I keep a close eye on, for Jack of course, the pumpkin I mean:)

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  10. I think that wisdom really begins when we understand our own impermanence. You do a hard job with great wisdom.

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    1. We think we're immortal when we're young until life starts messing with us. We lose so much and in the end ourselves.

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  11. I don't think losing a lot of patients makes you sound like a bad nurse, given the severity of illness you routinely deal with! Grief IS a fascinating subject. When I practiced Buddhism I always appreciated the emphasis on embracing the constant changes in life -- not clinging to what was or what we expect things to be. It seemed like such a healthy and realistic perspective but of course DOING it can be difficult!

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    1. As with most things, it's the doing that is the hardest. You're so right.

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  12. What a fantastically thoughtful post - and a wonderful quote on grief. My friend wrote a personal book on Grief it's called 'West - a journey through the landscape of loss' n
    by Jim Perrin. He lost is son to suicide and wife to cancer in nine months - but he came though.. changed of course. Grief is the hardest of all emotions I think.

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    1. I will look for that book and thank you for the recommentation.

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  13. Love this post- cracks open my head and my heart- I appreciate what you are doing with your one precious life! many do i am sure.

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