Ease My Way

I’m an oncology nurse.  I never like saying that at a party because the brightness of any room suddenly dims.  So, when someone asks me: “What do you do?”  I want to run away, lie, or make a sarcastic comment about my recreational activities.  It’s never good.  There are several popular responses: oh wow, you’re an angel, and thank god for people like you, or that must be really hard. Then, stories of tragedy and sadness of lost relatives and friends follow.  Suddenly, the party is now a support group.  Ugh.

It’s okay.  I’m not mad about it and I do not expect it to change.  No one can relate to another person who works in oncology if they aren’t in it…just like I can’t relate to a cancer patient because I have never been one.   Those same assumptions can be made about any job no one can imagine doing.  For me, it’s Labor & Delivery, phlebotomy, or sewer maintenance: oh wow, you’re an angel, and thank god for people like you, or that must be really hard. 

Being in oncology IS really hard.  Sometimes I ask myself how long I can continue to do it.  Will I burn out?  What will make me burn out? What will that look like?  What will I do?  I look ahead and wonder if I should get a higher degree, or teach, or be a lifty.  Will I just blow a fuse one day and not be able to function?  And then, I realize that all my worrying and concerns are compounding on top of each other and I find myself on the verge of an anxiety attack.  I have to find a way to stop thinking.  I go outside.

We’ve lost several patients recently.  We knew their time was short here.  Timeline isn’t something I focus on when treating patients.  I focus on being in the moment, giving them what they need, and hoping that we can get them one more year, one more month, one more day…until our days run short and we have nothing left to give but a warm hug.

Oncology nurses can’t talk to anyone else in our everyday lives about it.  Our coworkers can’t handle more that they already have.  Our families and friends don’t understand and HIPAA prevents us from talking to them anyway.  We want to leave it at work where we think it belongs.  But it doesn’t stay there.  We stash it away to be present for our families.

The next day, we show up for work in the morning to learn someone else has passed and we can’t even cry or be upset because the next patient is sitting right in front of us.  And we start to wonder what is wrong with us…like we didn’t care enough because we aren’t responding in the right way.  We can’t.  So the emotion sits and waits.  And these experiences pile up…one after another…until someone loses their shit or raises a white flag.

Someone raised a white flag recently and the place rallied.  Much like firefighters and suicide counselors that have trauma from their job, we were in need of some help.  How do we do this?  How do we find a way to address our own pain and show up to take care of our patients, our families, our friends? The whole place was feeling it at once.

Counselors are sneaky.  They throw in something and let you suck on it for a while.  If you are lucky enough to be paying attention, you might actually get somewhere.  Here was my bait:

What is it about your job that makes you show up everyday?

I couldn’t even come up with an answer right away.  I had to suck on it for a day or two.  It wasn’t money, or accolades of the job.  It wasn’t insurance benefits (though that is a huge bonus).  It wasn’t to make new friends.  It certainly wasn’t to torture myself with sadness.

I went waaaay back to the first day of nursing school when we had to come up with our own nursing philosophy where they asked: Why do you want to be a nurse?  What is your personal philosophy on nursing?

This is what I said:

“To make my patient’s journey as pleasant as possible in light of a difficult situation.  I want to ease their way.”

I know that I do that…and I’m good at it.  I’m doing what I said I would do.  But why does it matter when we sometimes lose? Why do I keep showing up for people day after day knowing that my work will come with a certain amount of personal suffering?  How am I able to keep allowing myself to be vulnerable and get close to the people around me knowing that it may only be temporary?

Oh yeah.

Life is not static.  Nothing is guaranteed.  While this concept used to bother me, it now brings me comfort in accepting its magnitude.  It allows me to be present in the moment and experience it all: pain, joy, suffering, laughter, love, loss.

It occurred to me why it matters that I show up and do what I do, despite the risk of being hurt:

By doing my best to ease other’s way…it eases MY way. 

So…rather than stuffing those feelings away, I know it is okay to feel them: sadness, loss, joy, laughter, love.  People leave this plane everyday, leaving loved ones behind.  I don’t get to keep them here for me.  I get to be honored that I was part of their journey, one that was really, really hard…and yet we found love, joy, and laughter to soften the blow.  We shared the journey and my life is better because of it.

This is why I show up.  

Why is this so easy to forget?

Don’t answer that.  I already know the answer because I’ve battled this for a long time.  I get caught up in what I think I should be feeling/doing, what I think others would want me to feel/do, rather than being who I am.

After this little realization…I felt lighter.  I felt my energy source renewed

…and all I did was change my view.