warpednormal's Diaryland Diary

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Take me river, carry me far

i guess i could talk about how emotionally overwhelming this week has been. beginning with the fact that my patient was young, and only recently been told of his diagnosis, and was awaiting his treatment, and how i couldn't for the life of me find any way to say the right things when it seemed like he needed it. he's amazingly high spirited though, so full of life despite...death creeping up beside him. he had a teddy bear, and i guess at first i found it rather weird..he's in his forties..then he told me it actually was given to him by a friend and has a hot pack inside of it which you could microwave to keep you warm....so, i guess. it isn't weird at all.
my other patient couldn't speak english and she spent most of the time in utter frustration with me. luckily, my instructor spoke punjabi, and when she told me that my patient thinks i'm only a child, i felt my body curl into a metaphoric ball because i knew she was right. i have zero professionalism as of yet, and i know that.
but then she started crying, and my instructor told me that she was scared, that she wants to know when she would be getting better...
she had no idea that she wasn't. she was in for palliative chemo. so i held her hand and stayed with her, nodded my head, if only to make her see that i was there, i was present and i will be with her despite it all. i massaged her hands and she finally smiled at me, nodded her head in thanks (it seemed) and i realized, i truly realized, with all my being, that sometimes, words aren't always the only way to understand each other.

also, i lost my stethoscope (50 dollars worth) and its the second stet i lost.. i went to the hospital today though, and found it. so yes, this week has been full of its ups and downs.

tired as all hell.

10:43 p.m. - 2010-01-21

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