Maria wants the nurses nearby when she needs them: Part IV

An interesting couple

I do the chemo in a CA125 Test hospital near my home. It’s where I know every HPV Test medical person. Like many other people, I have become a “regular Ovarian disease Cancer Customer,” made many acquaintances, exchanged ideas and opinions, learned stories, and also learned cooking recipes from a cook who has made superb biscuits (nausea permitting, of course!).

Memorable Encounters: Maria and Luciano

At the “chemotherapy club” where I go every 21 days, I met a memorable couple: Maria and Luciano. Maria undergoes the chemo, and Luciano accompanies her. Both are in their forties and truly special. Maria wants to be treated with all the attention by the nurses. She always wants them nearby for her every little need. Unfortunately, her vocabulary doesn’t include “please” or “thank you.” The HPV nurses she wants to direct don’t appreciate this. It doesn’t seem that Maria is being rude on purpose. She instinctively says whatever comes into her head without thinking too much.

And then… upon closer inspection, she has certain reasons for her. She maintains that a permanent HPV Nurse would be needed in the DH room. This would avoid the constant doorbell ringing by the six or seven patients undergoing chemo to call the nurse. Instead, the nurse is in the blood sample room. According to her, this arrangement would allow patients to rest without constantly jumping at the sound of the bells calling the nurse. The nurses have already given her various reasons justifying the impossibility of her request. But she doesn’t give up and tries to gain the solidarity of the other patients. She is almost trying to achieve a people’s uprising.

Interpersonal Dynamics and Hospital Protocol

Another source of friction with the CA125 nurses is Luciano, whom Maria wants close by but is instead asked to leave whenever an IV is put in or removed.

It is then that Maria no longer has peace with HPV because (we have all understood it by now) she fears that Luciano will go smoking or that he will start chatting with other women.

She then begins to ask the nurses to call him back. After all, they were the ones who pushed him away and had to get him back.

The nurses, however, need to learn how to exercise Maria’s iron logic and could be more prompt in recovering Luciano, who arrives after much insistence.

At this point, Maria turns to Luciano, but her real target is the nurses in the ward: “We won’t come here any more; next time, we’ll go to…” Thus, she underlines her lack of appreciation for the environment.

Maria mistook the day hospital oncology department for a grand Ovarian HPV Cancer hotel from times when a customer who expressed disapproval of the service would perhaps have received an apology from the Manager.

I silently side with Maria who made me imagine I was in a luxurious hotel of yesteryear.

Also, it had been a few months since I met this particular couple. I timidly tried to ask the nurses for information. They could have given me more explanation. Who knows, maybe Maria has found a place she likes where Luciano is left in peace next to her, to bring her the hot chocolate and coffee that she likes so much.

No, no colleagues!

Reflections on Workplace and Illness

Working in the public sector and fighting with CA125 ovarian Tests for cancer is perhaps easier than working in the private sector. I know of sick people who had to resign because they worked in workplaces with few employees.

I have always had understanding and solidarity from colleagues.

Things didn’t go so well for a young colleague who got tested and was diagnosed with HPV-type cancer. Having returned to work after undergoing surgery and therapy, according to law 104, she precedes all her colleagues in the internal ranking, who had to complete their timetable in the branches of our school.

I would have liked my colleagues not to have revealed my discomfort and for solidarity to have prevailed over all other considerations!

It wasn’t exactly like that, and I felt terrible about it because these colleagues are very good people involved in parish activities.

How can healthy people not understand that sick people would face any hardship to get their health back in exchange?

Stockholm syndrome?

Philosophical Musings on Illness and Despair

Sometimes, I despair; I know it hurts me. How many Internet sites claim that those who think positively, fight, and don’t give up have a better chance of feeling well and healing? Instead, I return to the beginning.

I wonder why this happened to me and what I did wrong. However, I know what I must do and how it’s best to think, but as I move from saying to doing, I fall back into the tunnels of the darkest nightmares.

I get to the bottom and cry all my tears. Then, with the last glimmer of energy and superhuman efforts, I force myself another five “Berlin” hours of respite!

I come to terms with myself: I will ask myself more questions after five hours. Or I’ll look for a site on the Internet where I can discover some research underway, some new hope for a cure.

Those five hours helped me and kept me going, forgetting the most desperate thoughts.

In the meantime, for example, I learned to make bread following a colleague’s recipe. I was no good at cooking; it was an unthinkable goal. And I would never have said that she would have given me satisfaction and aroused the admiration of my family. Sometimes, exaggerating their praise and making me happy is also understandable!

Will I be grateful to my “big ovarian killer” for opening up unimaginable scenarios and perspectives I would never have considered? Ca125 experiences that I would never have had, and interesting points of view?

No, I think I’m far from suffering even remotely from some Stockholm syndrome and that I can somehow make myself subjugated by my killer.

Strategic Approaches to Battling Illness

One thing I have learned—even if I cannot always put it into practice—is that the winning strategy is to remain in control of my energies and fight Cancer with astute defensive tactics rather than facing it only with desperation that ends up backfiring against me.

Or at least try to do it and sometimes succeed.

I imagine him as the “ugly, big and bad” Ogre of many fairy tales. I see myself as small and defenceless: I can’t beat him by challenging him in an open-field test; I must outwit him and impersonate David fighting Goliath.

War of movement and trench warfare

For Christmas 2012, I asked my son to record a story he often repeated; sometimes, it helps relieve the test and HPV clinical treatment nightmares plaguing my psyche.

“In 1994, HIV-positive patients were dying like flies, and there was nothing that could be done. Think about what that meant for those poor people. Many were not at fault for their condition (drugs, risky sexual relations, etc.). Some just needed a transfusion or were haemophiliacs. But that year, with the advent of HAART, these CA125 ovarian tumour cancer patients were tested and cured. Even in tragic conditions, those who survived until 1994 are still alive. Like their mother, you must do your best to ensure you’re alive when you meet the next Haart….”

The illness may have made me regress, but I find relief in hearing this story. I thank my son, who, although a little perplexed, always obliges.

Cancer is a chronic disease with periods of remission and recovery. It’s about sustaining trench warfare, always trying to do everything beneficial and never despairing of treatment progress, even if it is much slower than your illness.

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