Ugly crying face in In other news

Today was the most heart breaking day. I had to send a patient home to die, he’s 46. He has a wife and two young children, like primary school age. He’s always handled his disease with so much dignity and optimism, it almost makes it worse. He tried everything possible to get better, for his wife and kids. Two stem cell transplants in the end, the first relapsed after two years, the second one failed within weeks. The chemo, the blood tests, the infections, the transfusions. He did it all with such grace.

Safe to say it’s been an emotional day for us all. I think every single one of my colleagues has cried at some point. Another of our patient’s daughters summed it up perfectly. I was chatting to her, she’s a non practicing nurse, having left to have her family. And she said to me, ‘it feels like we’re already part of your ward family even though dad has only just been diagnosed. It’s admirable how much you care for your patients, we couldn’t help but notice you sending that man home, how every one of you had tears in your eyes’.

It’s true. We get told all the time we spoil our patients, we mollycoddle them, bend over backwards for them. And you know what, we wouldn’t argue with that. We do spoil our patients. Because they do become our family. We know everything there is to know about them, and they know plenty about us. To that end, we treat them like our family. If they ask for something and it’s achievable we will always go above and beyond. If it were my nan or my mum in that hospital bed I would want them to be treated with care, and compassion, and friendship. We get close to our patients. It’s us who rub their backs if they’re sick, dry their tears when they’re struggling to find the strength to get through treatment. It’s us who listen to their darkest fears and tell them it’s ok to feel like that. We do that for them and we do that for their families.

And that’s what we’ve done this week. We’ve listened to this man’s wife tie herself in knots trying to decide whether to be here with him or home with the kids. We’ve reassured her that we don’t think she’s in the least bit terrible for wanting to shelter her children from their fathers death, when he wanted to go home and she wasn’t sure. But above all we’ve borne witness to so much love, and sacrifice, and we found a solution that worked for them and made it happen.

My heart is a bit more broken tonight, but also all the richer for having known this man and his family. For all the conversations about travel, for his inspiration, for all the tips he gave me when visiting Madrid, a trip I booked on a whim in response to being the person who realised he had relapsed and the ensuing feeling it gave me of ‘fuck it, life is way too short’. He doesn’t know he was the inspiration for that trip, that it was booked as a result of him, but I’m glad I was lucky enough to be able to share that with him.

I just hope they manage at home and he has a peaceful final few days.

Xx