Blood, sweat and tears

(Written on Sunday).

I have 17 days off from work. Well, 16, today was day one. And man am I in need of them.

Yesterday was my third long day in a row, and what a day. It started with a phone call from one of my patient’s husbands. He was crying down the phone, saying she had rung him and blamed him for the infection she had, telling him she didn’t want to see him.

Basically, the patient was jan. She has leukaemia, and had been sent home on Tuesday for a week before her next cycle of chemo. The girls were reluctant to send her because she looked peaky, but she insisted she was fine to go.

Cue Friday, and the arrival of jan back on the ward, desperately unwell and feeling like death. They’re treating her for an infection, common in post chemo patients, but when you’ve set your mind on six days at home and end up feeling crap for the three days you did manage, then it seems a setback.

I sat with her for an hour on Saturday morning while she was having panic attacks and questioning why this is happening to her, she lost the plot for a little bit, her husband cried, she cried, I cried with them, then came home and cried all night. She doesn’t want to have cancer anymore, she wants to go home and have her life back to normal. What do you say to that?

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been so sad in work, or afterwards. Something about her just struck a chord with me, she reminds me of my mum. Everything she’s done in her life has been for her kids. Even now when she’s so poorly she doesn’t want them to know how crap she feels, doesn’t want to share her fears with them.

I told her that she needs to let them in. That they’re just as scared as she is. That this isn’t a time to be turning on each other but a time to be supporting each other and sticking together. She felt awful that she’d shouted at her husband. She worried that he’d never forgive her. I explained to them both that infections happen, she probably had it brewing before she’d even left hospital and it’s come to the fore while she’s been at home.

She said I always know the right thing to say, and seemed a little calmer. Her mum came to sit with her, and I felt reassured I’d done as much as I could. Before I finished that night I went to see her, to tell her I’d see her when I was back from my time off and to behave herself! She smiled, and thanked me, bless her. She’s being so incredibly brave.

She absolutely broke my heart, I’ve honestly never been so affected by a patient before. John was beside himself, he didn’t know what to do for me to make me feel better, and truthfully, there wasn’t anything he could have done. I just needed to cry, to get it out of my system.

I don’t talk much about my mum and when she was ill and how I felt about it. People don’t understand that just because she’s better now, doesn’t mean we didn’t still go through all those emotions at the time. And because it all happened to quickly and everything else was still carrying on at the same time, I don’t think I processed any of it.

When you’re in the last three months of your qualification, the most important three months of your life to date, and have a younger brother and sister, and grandparents, not to mention the countless other friends and family who were never off the phone, to contend with, it leaves very little time to actually ponder how you feel about it all yourself, let along time for a full blown meltdown.

I’m kind of waiting for it. It’s got to come eventually. I have moments, where bits slip out, when I can’t stop thinking about what could have been, about how poorly she really was. I said to her recently that if my dad had rung us after we’d come back from Dubai and said she’d died, I wouldn’t have been shocked. That’s how poorly she was.

Try getting your head around that, and carrying on with real life at the same time.