I’m sitting on a plane amongst 50 strangers and the thought that just popped into my head was “Jane is going to die.” I understand how that would seem morbid and hopefully not the most normal of thoughts to pass through ones head, but I suppose after the last few weeks I have had, it is rather apropos. I shall explain.
I am a nurse, a cancer one. The general response received when this information is made known is something along the lines of “Oh, wow. It takes a very special person to be able to deal with all that.” The that being referred to is “death.” I suppose the euphemism serves to blunt the depressive nature of the topic. I tend to take this comment graciously but quickly blow it off since it has never been any big deal to me. I love my job and care deeply for my patients, don’t get me wrong, but for me, cancer nursing wasn’t so much as a calling as it was simply where I got a job. Still, there seems to be a general consensus of which I am not a part, that cancer nursing is somehow a more emotionally painful profession than other areas. I can only assume this is because cancer is, indiscriminately, a mass murdering fuckhead, and in many cases you don’t know it is trying to kill you until it’s nearly too late to attempt a fight. Be that as it may, the majority of my time at work is spent laughing and drug pushing; rarely do I get noticeably upset.
Ok, so back to Jane, (Jane is not her real name, so you know. It is her alias that I made up to protect her identity from all the many people who will fail to honor the HIPPA gods). Jane, as I mentioned so poignantly before, is dying. This may elicit a variety of emotion but today, for me, it brought frustration and anger, not that Jane was dealt such a sad hand in her 29 year life, but that the doctor’s were too cowardly to tell her point blank that she is headed to deaths door and that Jane and her mother were too stupid to figure it out on their own. Jane and her mother are under the impression that the tumor she has in her shoulder which metastasized from her stage IV ovarian cancer, is going to get all better after the hell that is radiation therapy. In reality, Jane is dying. I feel it important to repeat this statement so as to emphasize just how cold I have become. While Jane is in excruciating pain with a bone tumor, a possible brain tumor, and is living with a belly which lacks all her woman parts because of the ovarian cancer which started the party, I am entertaining thoughts that she is being whiny and stupid to let her family, especially her three boys think that she is going to be all better soon. It is not until I have de-stressed from this last shift by showering, playing with my dog, packing and boarding a plane to Philadelphia that I process how horrible I have become. Jane is going to die. Jane is going to leave behind 3 young sons, a mother who loves her and countless friends. Jane is going to die and I have become so numb to this reality that I am probably in worse denial than she is. Ok maybe that is an unfair statement, but I certainly am living with a mindset that death isn’t real and the repercussions don’t exist. I can argue that this is a necessary defense mechanism for me to cope with my job but if the result is being annoyed by a dying woman’s pain, then how helpful is it in making me a good compassionate nurse?
Jane is dying and crying, I am living and bitching. Time to reevaluate.
