So Mondays are the day that everyone that had a sniffle or a drinking binge or just a bad weekend comes into the clinic with all their saved up ills. Monday is also the day when we need that little bit of extra caffeine or a cocktail or something to keep us going till five o'clock. the morning seemed manageable, but the afternoon swirled around me. I spent most of the time not knowing who was where. I hate mondays.
Good news this afternoon though. A patient who was diagnosed and treated for pancreatic cancer last year came in for a blood pressure check. Pancreatic cancer is often a death sentence. She'd been sliced, diced and irradiated and is so far in the clear. A month ago, she came in for pain in her abdomen. I adjusted her blood pressure medication and sent her off to the CT scan already scheduled with her oncologist. I felt like I was arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. She brought in her results and her CT scan was as normal as we could have hoped with no sign of cancer. I exhaled.
She had told me what a difficult time her adult children had experienced with her diagnosis, how they worried and and fretted over her and grieving the possibility of losing their mother. She told them (and me) "we're born to die, I'm not afraid to die but I'm not dead yet. We have to live until we can't".
Little bits of immortality and light to be found among the ashes of the day.
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