The last tic tac

When I was a little girl, orange Tic Tacs were the best. They tasted a lot like baby aspirin…but you could eat a bunch of Tic Tacs and not die. It wasn’t until years later that science discovered that giving aspirin to kids was a bad idea and can cause liver or brain damage. Yeah, […]

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Where did the time go?

I feel old saying that. I feel old anyway, like I’ve aged 20 years in a very short period of time. My last post was in 2020. It’s 2024. Four years went by in a blip. Today I feel like I am in a dream…some days it feels like a nightmare. I just want to […]

Hold the Phone

I was talking to a student today about medical futility and the ethical dilemmas that sometime crop up in caring for patients in the hospital. Sometimes patients are so sick that it appears there is no cure, no fix. It can be patient driven, a product of the patient’s environment, or progression of disease and […]

Thick Skin or Solid Foundation?

I’ve had several folks tell me lately that I must have thick skin to work in the field that I do. The heartbreak, sadness, and loss that is faced every single day in the 30 rooms on our unit… and likely in the 576 beds at our hospital…is phenomenal. Heartbreak isn’t just oncology. It’s everywhere. […]

Why are you?

I am. I need not be no other. A friend recently commented on how adventurous and free my life seems to be. This, I say, is the fruit of my labor. The years of not knowing who I was until I found me. The relationships I found my way out of in order to […]

Boundary Issues

It’s the obnoxious person at the party that no one invited. It’s the silent terrorist plotting it’s next move. It knows no boundaries, Has no prejudices It is not kind, compassionate, or loving in any way. It sees no religion. It has no empathy. It is cancer. It does not know that we are […]

On Holiday

Every day is like Christmas to me. Gifts. Love. Music. Appreciation. Gratitude. Every morning when I am blessed with waking up, I think of the people in my life and I feel as though I’ve been given a warm holiday for my heart. Everyone I know has lost someone close to them…someone that cannot be […]

Disconnect

As I walked up the steps to my favorite pub, I exhaled long and steady, relieving myself of complicated work day stress. It was raining sideways, the wind whipping at my neck as I approached the door. I couldn’t wait to get inside where I knew it was warm, where I knew I’d see a familiar face, […]

Faith

Every day I go to work, the city is lit with twinkling lights until the darkness yields to the sun. On our unit, the sun rises during the changing- of-the-guards in the war against cancer. We, the patients and staff, are lucky to see what we see on a crisp clear day: a gold or […]

Keep Moving Forward

Happy New Year! Officially, this week starts the Chinese New Year. 2015 is the year of the Sheep, or Ram, or Goat…depending on what part of Asia you come from. I prefer to think of it in “sheep terms” and this is why: sheep are impressionable, kind of dumb/peaceful animals, and cannot understand how to […]