[Colleens_Husband]

Full of Beans:

There are just too many of these people to go around. Perhaps she is just terribly unsuited to be an oncology nurse.

Before Colleen had her first chemo, they had a nurse come in and give a talk about the dangers of chemo, how to inject neupogen, and when to phone the 24 hour nurse on duty. This lady would close her eyes when she was talking to us. She wouldn't look at us when she was speaking. It was so distracting, that I started waving my hand in front of her face to see if she was looking to see what was going on. Colleen was doing everything she could to stifle a laugh. It got to the point that I motioned to Colleen that we could try to sneak out of the room when she was talking to see if she noticed.

The head oncology nurse, who was also Colleen's case manager happened to be watching all of this and she came in and asked us some questions about what the closed-eye nurse just talked about and we had no clue. The message was just lost on us. She asked the closed-eye nurse to leave the room for a second and asked us what was going on. I said, Colleen isn't dead yet, she needs to be treated like she was still alive. The head nurse told us that the closed eye nurse would get too involved in patients and she would be crushed if they died or had bad outcomes. I asked the head nurse if the closed eye nurse is capable of being an oncology nurse anymore. My feeling was that perhaps both her and her patients were better off if she were moved to pediatrics or somewhere else.

Anyways, the point of this overly long story is that perhaps your second nurse has had too much or not enough time in the oncology ward and she is saying inappropriate things as a way of reducing her own fears and anxieties. Let us be realistic. There is no good way to tell you that you cannot achieve a lifelong dream of having children. Perhaps your nurse is too invested in your loss that she is protecting herself by saying these stupid things. Maybe she isn't saying these things to you, but she is saying them to herself. Perhaps she is saying that you are braver than she ever could be.

Of course, I could be all wrong. I just wanted to put something out there for you to consider. If you need to get along with this woman, then maybe there is something these comments can tell you about her.

Best of Luck to you,

Lee