“The truth is...no one wants to have a pediatric oncologist walk into their room,” my attending said.
But there we were, seated across from the patient, at eye level, confirming her own suspicions. Cancer, he said. She had read about it on google but hoped like the rest of us that her thoughts were just due to being engulfed on the internet for far too long.
Cancer, he said. He said the word. But she put a story to it. She had a a dream job that she was working every day for. She had younger siblings who looked up to her. She was a daughter, and her mother had seen her own fair share of life’s betrayals. And now, she was watching life betray her with her daughter.
Cancer, but really it’s a weird feeling to know one’s body has done things out of its control. Suddenly the body’s pain needs control. The body’s nausea needs control. The body’s aches need control. Suddenly, the body one did not think too hard about needs an extreme amount of attention, and we check and inspect and listen and watch counts, counts, and more counts. Is it in the spinal fluid? Is it in the brain? Can we say it has taken over, or can we say we will take it over instead?
We spent time in the lab looking at cells for confirmation. We look at imaging. We hear the story, and I find myself holding my breath each time.
But in pediatric oncology, I’ve learned that telling someone they have cancer does not qualify as a bad day; it’s the job. It’s the job to be the person to catch this patient when they hear their diagnosis, to offer them the plan to carry them through it and home. They are the solace, the future, the hope. It is a bad day to say goodbye in this world, but the beauty is it is their job to make sure the only goodbye they say is to send them back home.
It is a gift to witness these vulnerable moments and be the one to say I’ll catch you.
And there is nothing more that I want than to be the person who does exactly that.
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