As a hospice nurse, you can expect that all of your patients will die eventually. It’s a given. In fact, working anywhere in the medical profession, you can expect at any point in time that if you are caring for patients, at some point you will lose a patient or two (or several) to death. One of the sayings I use all the time is, “no one gets out of this life alive.” While I was prepared for the loss of patients, I had no idea how many personal losses I would experience during my professional career.
Right when I first started nursing school I was working in both a doctor’s office and in an urgent care. I worked with some great people who were really encouraging to me. It was helpful because I came home every day saying I was going to quit, and they encouraged me and kept me focused on the goal. While I was working on my nursing degree, two of these wonderful people died of cancer. One woman died of lung cancer at 41, and another died of stomach cancer at 53. They were fantastic medical professionals that I will always remember, and so encouraging.
Shortly after I graduated nursing school, one of my favorite professors was diagnosed with a glioblastoma. She was a nurse you would want to model yourself after. I was crushed to hear about her illness. As a new nurse grad, one of the first patients I took care of was one of the OB/GYN’s that took care of me when I was pregnant with my 3 babies. He had end-stage colon cancer. It took everything I had to go into his room and not cry like a baby while I was taking care of him. As my career went on, I lost 2 other people who worked on my unit. One died from multiple myeloma, another from lung cancer with brain mets. There were several other coworkers that were touched by the big C and took the treatment and survived, many returning back to work (and I am so happy that they did, especially one of my very close friends who survived her struggle with breast cancer). One day when I was pulled to another unit I had a patient who looked familiar and I realized she had been the director of the nursing program where I went to school. I found out later that she died from ovarian cancer. Then came the day when I heard that my former supervisor was ill, but she continued to work while taking her treatment. I always knew that she was Super Woman, but she proved it without a doubt the way she handled Stage IV pancreatic cancer like a champ. I often told her that she was my hero and that I wanted to be just like her when I grew up (even though she was younger than I am). After watching the way she handled her illness with dignity, I will never be able to hold a candle to that woman. She is one in a million.
I hope that I can be 1/10 of the nurse that you were. You left us way too soon, Susie, but it proves the point about the good dying young. You are loved and missed by many. I lost my mentor…but your memory still lives in my heart.
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