I haven’t written much lately, unfortunately I have been up to my eyeballs in work and haven’t had a moment to sit down and reflect. This weekend I had one of those smack-you-in-the-face moments where I just needed to take a step back and remind myself of all the things I already know but tend to forget.
In clinical, the majority of patients that I treat are older adults. I am fully aware that young adults get cancer too; if you know my history, you know that this reality has forced itself upon me in the past. Lately though, I haven’t had interactions with younger patients. I have been busy going about my routine days: 8 hours of clinical, go home and study, try to sleep, and then repeat again tomorrow. It is an all too familiar habit, that sometimes I do it all in a blur.
On Friday as I was prepping for patients, I saw something that made me freeze: 28-year-old female, palliative intent. Shit, seriously? Even though I am working in the cancer field, I still sometimes have the “it would never happen to me” mentality, until patients like this come across my plate. I sat there thinking about what this poor girl must be dealing with and I couldn’t fathom what it would be like. I’m 28 years old, a few months from graduating, and planning my wedding. How would I handle the news of knowing that everything I had done in the past few years, every plan I had made, every goal I had set, could be derailed with only a few words from a doctor. I left work that afternoon and drove home, a long and traffic filled drive spent thinking about my own life and my own mortality. I realized that it isn’t something I have given much thought to for a while, I just took for granted that I would finish school, work in the field I am passionate about, have an amazing wedding, and live a great life. None of those things are guaranteed to me, or to anyone for that matter.
By the time I made it home, I was emotionally drained. I just wanted to kick back, shut off my brain, and watch one of my favourite shows, “Say Yes to the Dress”. There was a young girl 24 years old there to pick out her wedding dress. She was newly engaged and newly bald, thanks to her cancer treatment. Really? This had to be happening on tonight’s episode? I watched as this hopeful and beautiful young woman picked out the dress of her dreams. It made me think about when I picked out my wedding dress. Although we were both celebrating a similar moment, there were clearly differences in our thought processes. I was thinking about whether I could lose a few pounds before the big day. She was thinking about whether she would live long enough to make it to her big day. At the end of the episode, they showed a picture of the girl in her wedding dress at her wedding. They also showed the date of her birth, followed by the date of her death: 2012. My heart sunk. I found myself googling her name, which took me to her blog. I sat there in tears reading through her story. She talked about her experience of being diagnosed, hearing the doctor say, “I wish I had better news for you”. She wrote about her feelings before going in for surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. She wrote about her family, and her fiancé whom had proposed only weeks before she was diagnosed. Here she was, in the excitement of the engagement and planning her wedding, never once thinking it could be taken from her. Although she lived to her wedding in August, I am sure it was nothing like she had ever envisioned, but she made it none the less, before passing away in September. The last entry in her blog was one written by her mother. The pain in that mother’s heart poured out of my computer screen; a pain that no mother should have to bare.
The message that I took from the days experiences, and the message I hope to pass on to you, is that life is fragile, life does not owe us anything, and life is never a guarantee. These are all things we know, but when everything is going right in life, we tend to forget about the alternative. We tend to be naive to the possibility that things can go horribly wrong in the blink of an eye. So today, give an extra hug to those you love. Don’t expect things to stay the same forever. Life is change. If everything is right in your life, maybe think about what you can do to help others when everything is going wrong in theirs. It doesn’t take a lot of time or a lot of money to reach out, you can give someone a moment of your time, or even a simple gesture. Donate some clothes you never wear, take that old homeless man a sandwich, give blood, or simply just hold a door open for someone. There are endless possibilities, but if you are happy and healthy, why not celebrate it by passing on some of that happiness. Wouldn’t you want someone to do it for you?
Call me Moni-Q. 