Small Towns and Childhood Mysteries

Two thoughts:

My first private client in this town died yesterday. I am glad. E. was in terrible pain even though we did what we (hospice) could to help her. Curiously, besides the day I was stuck to near tears by working with her, I am handling like I handle the deaths of my other clients. I think that is probably good.

Besides, a new patient was added to my roster. His wife is one of my clients. I guess I've lived here long enough where this is going to start happening more regularly.

*******

I guess growing up I heard the word cancer and never new what it meant. I knew that it meant you were eventually going to die. I knew that it usually started in one area and sometimes went someplace else. It was so mysterious and the implied meaning that it was terrible way to die was only explained by the sigh, nods and silence after someone said the word.

I know a lot more about cancer now. I know about the cellular process involved in mutations and 'mets' and some other biology stuff. Knowing that stuff doesn't really help though... All it tells you is what happened. It doesn't tell you 'about' it.

What I've learned from hospice is that cancer is painful, and the treatment the clients received before entering hospice were as bad as the disease. That people can live with this pain for years or they wake up one day after living in what they thought was a reasonably healthy body with a stomach ache and find that their body is riddled with cancer and subsequently die a week later.

How do you prepare people for that? You could live 5 more years or a week? There's not any way to know, really.