as the days fly by

As time just keeps going by (hello...it's Friday!), I soak up the blessings that God has given me.
I finished my cancer/HIV rotation at Harris, and now I am moving on to Nutrition Support (Tube feeds, Parenteral and Enteral support, etc.). I'm growing closer than I thought to the patients and staff at the hospital...which is great news. My heart is there. Finally.

I got to tell one of the diet techs yesterday (as she mentioned that I didn't have to pay attn in the staff mtg) about what Lynn (a TCU friend) told me a couple of years ago: "when you go somewhere, be all there. otherwise, you should have never shown up." I've taken this and run with it. It makes me excited when I get to share it with others, too. I think too many times we go and do go and do, and never realize what we're going and doing. If we'd just slow down and realize the steps that we take each day, I bet we'd live richer more plentiful lives.

Speaking of plentiful lives...I was asked on my post test yesterday what I thought a quality of life meant. I was given a case study where a pt had decided to go on Hospice due to her incurable dx and her multiple poor rxns to trxs. She felt the need to continue pain meds but terminate her chemo and radiation trxs to try and live the rest of her life comfortably instead of going through sickness and alt rxns. Here's what I wrote:

A quality of life is truly a choice by the person undergoing trxs (esp chemo for CA pts). In my opinion, we all choose the quality of life that we live and although this lady has chosen hospice, she can still live each day to the best that she can. Trxs and sickness would be a burden to her and her family, but sometimes we have to make decisions like refusing radiation and chemo to move on with our lives and live the best we can with what we have. We all will die from something one day, but it's not how we die, but how we live that truly matters.

After the day was over, and I was about to go home. My preceptor read my post test and told me that the last case study was her mother. Sometimes we are just blessed.