I’m sitting in a small non-descript room in the basement of the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. It’s a room with six blue reclining chairs, each with its own pole holding its own elixer.
People sit in this room, run by three uber capable nurses, who manoeuvre between patients giving them hemoglobin, vitamins, saline and other treatments for their cancer.
It’s another example of the awesomeness of nurses, still my favourite human cohort on the planet. These professionals are dealing with some pretty raw and painful looking radiation patients. Many of the patients here are undergoing, how do I say it plainly, barbaric treatments and these nurses are there for each and every patient as they make their way through the journey.
I say barbaric with full respect of where we are, and how far we have come along in recent years, and I’m sure that in 20 years we will be looking back at the people that sat in this room getting rehydration from there radiation treatments, etc and say ‘wow I can’t believe we used to do that’. But it’s the best we have today, and the people in this room are lucky to have the opportunity for this treatment.
And I consider myself one of the lucky ones as I’m simply getting a couple of bags of blood to boost my hemoglobin levels. I’m very excited to finally have some energy again, and to be able to get a full breath.
I hope you never have to sit in one of these chairs, but if you do you can count yourself lucky that you have the best nurses guiding you through a tough time.
I’m close to seven years being in and out of this room and cannot say enough positive things. I decided to write this blog post as I’ve just had two conversations with nurses I’ve interacted with for years, sometimes only seeing them once every year or so. As a matter of fact one nurse just asked from across the room if I was the patient that brought beers for all the nurses one Christmas.
Maybe that’s why I’ve built long term friendships here, it’s not me, it’s the beer.