So the answer is finally here: I have cancer. Funny, I always thought information like this would hit really hard, that it would be an 'oh my god!!!' kind of moment... but it wasn't. Somehow I just knew so there was no real shock involved. Not even a little bit of a surprise. Honestly, I think I would have been more surprised if they had said it wasn't cancer.
What I do find surprising is the level of compassion, empathy and willingness to help on the part of health care providers I am dealing with. For a few years around my daughter's birth, I worked in a doctor's office. If someone had difficulty for some reason, maybe a baby born with a birth defect or a stillbirth, something I knew was causing them mental distress... I would help them a little more knowing they needed it. Compassion, after all, is an integral part of nursing. Without it, who would even want to be a nurse?
But, ask your doctor's nurse sometime if she is an LPN or RN. No is usually the answer. They are often not nurses at all, just people willing to work for a little more than minimum wage. They put on the scrubs, hang a stethoscope around their neck and gladly label themselves as a nurse. But be sure not to make any assumptions here. A doctor can call anyone in his office a nurse if he/she so chooses. The actual Miriam-Webster definition of a nurse is: 'a person who is trained to care for sick or injured people and who usually works in a hospital or doctor's office'. Trained by who? Could be the office manager, doesn't matter. There is much lacking in that antiquated definition. A nurse should be someone who cares for people, who will do his/her best to make the patient's and their family's experience with illness a little better than it would have been without having him/her be part of it. Someone who understands how stress affects a person's ability to remember what was said and may influence their ability to reply quickly or to make many decisions. Someone who knows they have to be the stronger one and wants to help in any way they can. Someone who actually has the knowledge and background to enable them to do so. Where did all those nurses go?
What has been so difficult for me in this new journey hasn't been dealing with the fact that I am somewhat deformed now and need to decide how to handle what could ultimately be a terminal illness. What has been the most difficult has been dealing with the insensitivity of the staff in the doctor's offices. The doctors are great! Unfortunately, most of the interactions I have are with office staff. "I didn't get the pre-op orders from your surgeon, I need you to call them and tell them to fax them to me." So I do. "They don't need pre-op orders. Just tell them to send us medical clearance for surgery." So I do. "There have to be pre-op orders, ..." Doesn't anyone just pick up the phone and call for the patient anymore? That's what I used to do. Would I ever have said to a patient, especially a patient with a known brain injury, "Don't you remember (very sarcastically), I TOLD YOU I would call you when I heard from..." My mouth just hangs open in utter disbelief that people can be so uncaring and rude. Doesn't anyone realize that inside my mind was the dialogue "I might have cancer, I might have cancer, I might have cancer."
But have you noticed what is happening to us as a society? People are becoming less and less accustomed to speaking to each other. Courtesy is unnecessary when there is no interaction. We are forgetting how to be courteous to each other. When is the last time you called an office or business that a person actually answered the phone, a real person? "Your call is very important to us... please listen to the options carefully because they may have recently changed." Even people in relationships with each other sit at restaurants and other public areas with their faces in their phones not even acknowledging each other. Is it time for us to add Social Readiness and Interaction Training to the required courses for high school students?
I have been very proud of my grandson because of how well he has been taught to be polite. What astounds me is when a little 3-year-old boy holds the door for someone and they don't even acknowledge with a 'thank you.' He sets out in anticipation to hold the door and get to play the 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' game. He seems so confused when there is no acknowledgement. Not meaning to be rude he usually just looks up and says "You're supposed to say thank you." Yes, Tucker you are right! They ARE supposed to say thank you. Are we so preoccupied in our own self-importance that we don't even have to time to set this example for a young child? To show some appreciation so he will have the incentive to want to keep doing these things? I don't think those things are that important to anyone anymore.
Ok, so I am approaching my sixty-first birthday and all old people say 'things are not the way they used to be. We used to..." Is that all this is? Is getting old making me picky about unimportant things? I honestly don't know. Maybe as we get older we start to view the world as such a hostile place that we just don't want to be part of it anymore. I'm not quite there yet but I do find myself wanting to be around people less and less.
Fortunately my friends are considerate and compassionate. It is strangers and people I am forced to deal with that irritate me. As I have gotten older I have learned to pick and choose my friends carefully. Maybe with all this complaining I will get knocked off a few of their lists.
So it's more than 2 cents (why do we even have pennies anymore, they're not even worth bending over and picking one up when you see one). I'd say I just unloaded at least a good $2.75.
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