“How is Sébastien? Have you had any news?”
“No…” I answer a bit helpless. “We expect he’s stable!”
Isn’t that how it is with recovery? Nothing spectacular, but small daily victories, hardly perceptible…
As it was rainy on Saturday, I went to the library and found a wonderful book entitled: Every day counts lessons in love, faith, and resilience from children facing illness written by Maria Sirois, a licensed clinical psychologist. She writes about her experience during one year as an intern at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s pediatric oncology ward. Here are the top 10 most beautiful quotes from the book that taught me about:
Physicians: I learned how physicians do what they can based on what they know, and what they don’t know can be astonishing. Into that gap the good ones leap, using intuition, experimentation, and a willingness to go beyond the traditional borders of care to stretch the limits of the field. Through the creativity of these physicians, children who should not have, according to medical statistics, and some became fully cured despite obstacles others could not surmount. The term miraculous came to mind more than once that year at the hospital, as did a clear awareness that we don’t yet fully know, either in psychology or medicine, what will definitely offer a cure for any one person. (p. 5) Our physicians face a daily onslaught of bad news, difficult decisions, anxious patients, and unpredictable outcomes, all under the intense pressure of not enough time and the internal desire to do it all right for each patient every time. It is, in this new century, a profession that asks an extraordinary amount of its practitioners with little scaffolding to carry them through the emotional and mental exhaustion of the chronic presence of suffering. (p. 184)
Hospitals: A small city where travellers take up residence but never feel at home. (p.35)
The struggle: It is all a matter of holding on or letting go. Life can be reduced in most moments to this – the struggle to hold on and to let go.
Learning the truth: “Every professional faces this, Maria. Every doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, nurse and social worker learns this one truth at one point.” /…/
“That we can’t do it all?” Jason asked.
Paula turned to him. “That none of us is God.” (p. 85)
Time: In oncology, there is only the present time for physicians. The pressure of a full schedule, unexpected emergencies, interns and residents to train, exhaustion from being on call, and the relentless pager all cohere to create a hospital environment where doctors often do not wait for a better moment – later may not arrive for myriad reasons both practical and awful. (p. 41)
Fear: When she became truly honest with herself, she learned that fear was actually sometimes worse than the pain. She referenced a quote from Robert Frost’s “A Servant to Servants” – “the best way out is always through” (p. 184)
Love: Life is long. Everyone suffers at some point and everyone suffers tragedy upon tragedy at some point. The question is not what to do with the client, the question is how do you keep yourself full when the cataclysm comes? No healing happens when the healer is depleted. Fill yourselves. Then you’ll be able to offer a great deal, even if it’s only love that you offer. (p. 91)
Doing what you love: Jake’s youth and innocence supplied him with a protection and a knowledge I had forgotten. If you can live in the moment doing what you love, as children can, and you are surrounded by those you trust, then suffering is ameliorated and it becomes a part, not the whole, of your life. (p. 24)
Advice from Annie Dillard: “Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now… Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” She reminded her students of the note found in Michelangelo’s studio a few days after his death, a note left for his apprentice Antonio. It said, “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.” (p. 114)
Advice from a 16 year old patient to other patients: “Just tell them that every day counts. Even it it’s a sick day it still counts. /…/ What I mean is to try and find something that will make each day special. /…/ Even if it’s a bad day.” (p. 145)
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