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osodecanelaThe last couple of days have been difficult. Emotionally difficult.
I'm very connected with many of the people I see in my practice. As a result, I've always been somewhat in awe of oncologists. Such an enormous number of their patients die in the course of their treatment. Yes, there are many satisfying successes, but many will not survive. Personally, I don't have the gastric fortitude for it. Don't get me wrong; I cannot and have not ever walked away from either a patient facing a malignancy or someone in their dying process. I can cope with my own emotions, while facing this reality with a handful of people at a time. However, to predominantly work with people facing their mortality as a constant steady diet? That would rapidly destroy me. While many in this field find the work to be life affirming, I find it a major psychological drain. Me? I need to deliver babies.
This week has been marked by having to tell one patient their cancer is back and wide spread; another, the father of two children I delivered and who's much younger than I, that there's a tumor in his spleen, and a third, a lady with child, that there could be cervical cancer. There have been four newly diagnosed diabetics, plus two more I've been seeing for quite sometime, that truly need to be on insulin, and yet still are fighting the idea of it tooth and nail.
Even delivering the news to another woman that she's pregnant, was met with tears. I said, "I have good news." To my dismay, it was not. I've known this wonderful lady for almost 15 years and have delivered all of her kids. She's both an observant Catholic and doesn't want another child, and so, feels trapped. She's bright, self-sacrificing, caring, nurturing. Frankly, I don't have enough nice adjectives to describe her. Seeing her hurt this badly, for what I had thought would be joyful news, was so sad.
The highlight of my week was having my office manager's parents return from Bucharest. They'll be here for the next 6 months. After 5 years of waiting, they got their green cards last year, enabling them to spend half the year here with their eldest daughter and grandchildren, and the other half in Romania with their younger daughter and her kids. I like her parents a lot and gladly, its mutual. My husband and I stayed with them in Bucharest 4 years ago. We have some language barriers, but they're not insurmountable. Her dad speaks Romanian and French, her mom Romanian and English. My French is rusty at best and speaking with Marian (her father!) gives it a work out. Christina's English hasn't had much practice in the last 6 months since she last had to use it, but its still better than my French and often when Oana isn't there with us, she'll translate my English into Romanian for Marian.
I realized yesterday my Romanian has deteriorated. How can a language I don't speak deteriorate? I was quite surprised last year while Oana was translating, that I was often getting the gist of what was being said, before she repeated things to me in English. Romanian may be a romance language along with French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, but its sound is much harsher. I've been told by a number of native romance language speakers, it's the hardest for them to catch. When I was in Europe, I used my Spanish throughout Italy and found it fairly functional. Bucharest and the rest of Romania was very much another story. I found I usually glazed over listening to it. You know the look. It's the "dear-caught-in-the-headlights" look. I might have caught one or two words out of every 30. Trying to read the written word was in fact much easier than trying to listen to the spoken one. Yesterday, when it was spoken in front of me, I was back to glazing over.
Gifts however, are things that don't generally need translation. Christina and Marian came to the office to visit at lunch yesterday. We'd planned a tea tasting of the myriad of teas I have at the office. Marian settled on the two variants of Earl Grey, the Baroness Grey and the Russian Grey as his favorites and what he'd like Oana to order for them, from my tea merchant. I offered some Scottish B'fast, the one the Oana and I seem to be going thru faster than any of the others. We brew at least a couple of pots of tea each day; at least one is Scottish B'fast, generally the first. "Too Russian," opined both of her folks. "Much too Russian in flavor." Neither of them were having any of it. Good thing I had them taste test it. I had planned to get them a half pound of it, when I ordered more, as I'm almost out of it. Well, if having a 1/4 lb could be considered almost out.
After tea, Marian brought out a gift bag and from it a large Daum Nancy glass vase. "For you. Da." Ya' could have knocked me over with a feather.
In the late 1800's there was a major connection between the French and the Romanians. The Orient Express passed through the country on its journey east, cementing a connection from Paris to Bucharest, then often called the Paris of the East.
Artists Émile Gallé and the Daum family came up with techniques to layer and fuse colored glass making solid art glass, at a time when Louis Comfort Tiffany was creating his glories in cut class mosaics here in the US. Both Gallé and the Daums set up factories in Romania to create glass commercially and some of these workshops continue to produce work today. I saw plenty of examples for sale in Bucharest, many of which impressively beautiful. I've collected a small number of Gallé vases since, all of them fairly small. This Daum Nancy vase is large, the shape of a ginger jar, though without a lid. It's inner layer is sort of a mauve, the central layer much more clear and on the outer surface there's foliage in shades of green going towards orange. It's a striking and lovely piece and was so totally unexpected. What a nice note to end my work week on.
I'm very connected with many of the people I see in my practice. As a result, I've always been somewhat in awe of oncologists. Such an enormous number of their patients die in the course of their treatment. Yes, there are many satisfying successes, but many will not survive. Personally, I don't have the gastric fortitude for it. Don't get me wrong; I cannot and have not ever walked away from either a patient facing a malignancy or someone in their dying process. I can cope with my own emotions, while facing this reality with a handful of people at a time. However, to predominantly work with people facing their mortality as a constant steady diet? That would rapidly destroy me. While many in this field find the work to be life affirming, I find it a major psychological drain. Me? I need to deliver babies.
This week has been marked by having to tell one patient their cancer is back and wide spread; another, the father of two children I delivered and who's much younger than I, that there's a tumor in his spleen, and a third, a lady with child, that there could be cervical cancer. There have been four newly diagnosed diabetics, plus two more I've been seeing for quite sometime, that truly need to be on insulin, and yet still are fighting the idea of it tooth and nail.
Even delivering the news to another woman that she's pregnant, was met with tears. I said, "I have good news." To my dismay, it was not. I've known this wonderful lady for almost 15 years and have delivered all of her kids. She's both an observant Catholic and doesn't want another child, and so, feels trapped. She's bright, self-sacrificing, caring, nurturing. Frankly, I don't have enough nice adjectives to describe her. Seeing her hurt this badly, for what I had thought would be joyful news, was so sad.
The highlight of my week was having my office manager's parents return from Bucharest. They'll be here for the next 6 months. After 5 years of waiting, they got their green cards last year, enabling them to spend half the year here with their eldest daughter and grandchildren, and the other half in Romania with their younger daughter and her kids. I like her parents a lot and gladly, its mutual. My husband and I stayed with them in Bucharest 4 years ago. We have some language barriers, but they're not insurmountable. Her dad speaks Romanian and French, her mom Romanian and English. My French is rusty at best and speaking with Marian (her father!) gives it a work out. Christina's English hasn't had much practice in the last 6 months since she last had to use it, but its still better than my French and often when Oana isn't there with us, she'll translate my English into Romanian for Marian.
I realized yesterday my Romanian has deteriorated. How can a language I don't speak deteriorate? I was quite surprised last year while Oana was translating, that I was often getting the gist of what was being said, before she repeated things to me in English. Romanian may be a romance language along with French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, but its sound is much harsher. I've been told by a number of native romance language speakers, it's the hardest for them to catch. When I was in Europe, I used my Spanish throughout Italy and found it fairly functional. Bucharest and the rest of Romania was very much another story. I found I usually glazed over listening to it. You know the look. It's the "dear-caught-in-the-headlights" look. I might have caught one or two words out of every 30. Trying to read the written word was in fact much easier than trying to listen to the spoken one. Yesterday, when it was spoken in front of me, I was back to glazing over.
Gifts however, are things that don't generally need translation. Christina and Marian came to the office to visit at lunch yesterday. We'd planned a tea tasting of the myriad of teas I have at the office. Marian settled on the two variants of Earl Grey, the Baroness Grey and the Russian Grey as his favorites and what he'd like Oana to order for them, from my tea merchant. I offered some Scottish B'fast, the one the Oana and I seem to be going thru faster than any of the others. We brew at least a couple of pots of tea each day; at least one is Scottish B'fast, generally the first. "Too Russian," opined both of her folks. "Much too Russian in flavor." Neither of them were having any of it. Good thing I had them taste test it. I had planned to get them a half pound of it, when I ordered more, as I'm almost out of it. Well, if having a 1/4 lb could be considered almost out.
After tea, Marian brought out a gift bag and from it a large Daum Nancy glass vase. "For you. Da." Ya' could have knocked me over with a feather.
In the late 1800's there was a major connection between the French and the Romanians. The Orient Express passed through the country on its journey east, cementing a connection from Paris to Bucharest, then often called the Paris of the East.
Artists Émile Gallé and the Daum family came up with techniques to layer and fuse colored glass making solid art glass, at a time when Louis Comfort Tiffany was creating his glories in cut class mosaics here in the US. Both Gallé and the Daums set up factories in Romania to create glass commercially and some of these workshops continue to produce work today. I saw plenty of examples for sale in Bucharest, many of which impressively beautiful. I've collected a small number of Gallé vases since, all of them fairly small. This Daum Nancy vase is large, the shape of a ginger jar, though without a lid. It's inner layer is sort of a mauve, the central layer much more clear and on the outer surface there's foliage in shades of green going towards orange. It's a striking and lovely piece and was so totally unexpected. What a nice note to end my work week on.
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Date: 2007-09-02 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-03 03:03 pm (UTC)A friend - another nurse - back in Phoenix had burned out on the cancer ward in only ten years...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-04 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 12:39 am (UTC)He moved to being an OR nurse.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-05 02:59 am (UTC)Since cancer wards dealt with the problems of infection with no immune system, that's were they all ended up, no one else could handle that aspect...