Occupational Hazards
By Jaime
March 11, 2010
I study oncology. I’ve interned at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. I have known more people than I care to count facing a cancer diagnosis. Through my involvement with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, I have made friends who are cancer survivors or who later found themselves on the receiving end of a cancer diagnosis. And yet it never gets easier or less painful. I liken it to my past work as a rape crisis counselor; I know what’s coming, but the news and stories never fail to pain me or strike me deep in the heart. I’ve come to think of it as a kind of occupational hazard.
I got an email Friday night that one of the women whom I thought was going to do the triathlon with me in October has a recurrence of her breast cancer, for a third time. She has faced triple-negative breast cancer and inflammatory breast cancer, and now it is back and is metastatic, in at least one lung. She has two small children; she’s younger than my mother. I was not expecting this news, and it stunned me. It made me incredibly sad, and I felt that familiar ache of “We need to do better; how many more times can I hear this?”
Despite being around oncology constantly, news like this can still stop me in my tracks and cause me to cry. I’m not sure whether it is a blessing or a curse that I have not yet developed, and maybe will not develop, the thick skin that would perhaps cushion these blows.
Part of me wonders how I will continue to devote my life, even more so in the years to come, to oncology if I am so emotionally invested. I think my emotional investment makes me good at what I do, but I also want to take enough care of myself that I do not get burnt out or compromise my work. I know that recurrence, struggle and death are part of the work I do, and a large part of me wants to not forget that.
Dr. Craig Nichols, one of Lance Armstrong’s oncologists whom I had the good fortune of meeting several years ago, once said, “The burden of cancer is enormous, but what greater challenge can you ask? There’s no question it’s disheartening and sad, but even when you don’t cure people, you’re always helping them. If you’re not able to treat them successfully, at least you can help them manage the illness. You connect with people. There are more human moments in oncology than any other field I could imagine. You never get used to it, but you come to appreciate how people deal with it – how strong they are.” Now that is an occupational hazard I could get used to.
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