Remembering why

Today I started my last month in paediatric oncology. As I mentioned before, I was amazed by the amount of, lets call it (by lack of a better explanation) 'job satisfaction' I unexpectedly found in the paeds oncology ward. As I also alluded to before, I had in my mind's eye visions of terminally ill, miserable, sad patients, struggling through endless chemotherapy causing long hours of misery, nausea, vomiting, and who knows what else. How wonderfully surprised I was to find a place filled with... life! Kids with cancer are not busy dying. They are busy suriviving, getting over it, and sometimes just temporarily irritated with the inconvenience of having to deal with a few side-effects of therapy. Yes there are complications and bleeding and fevers and pain (lots of it at times) but there is hardly ever 'giving up'. The resilience of 'my patients' (oh yes, they belong to me!) never stops amazing me.

Of course another very special aspect of working in oncology is the fact that it is a relatively constant patient population, and very soon you find yourself being incorporated into the daily existence of every child. You start off by memorising weird and wonderful diagnoses, but before long you are able to piece together names, faces and (now less weird) diagnoses. Then, after a few weeks, you realise with a smile that you have bonded, in the true sense of the word, with a bunch of kids. Even though they come from completely different backgrounds, don't necessarily speak your language, didn't initially like this new stranger sticking needles into them for a whole long list of tests that make absolutely no sense to them... you suddenly find yourself part of the team. You are no longer a stranger. Slowly but surely you even get to know the finer nuances of their unique personalities, and you pride yourself at being able to spot the temperature spikes from the other side of the cubicle. You know each patient's reaction to chemotherapy, you anticipate the complications, you even feel up to managing the odd complication. And in a sudden quiet moment of clarity you remember again why you decided to study medicine. You are transported back to the days when you were full of ideals, all starry-eyed and innocent, making plans to change the world. And you know that, behind your tired eyes and underneath your thicker skin, you are still the same person. Maybe, for a few of these kids, you can still change the world.