Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A part of the job...

There is one part of being a cabana boy for a stroke victim who has cancer that really bites. Regrettably, her memory is not what it used to be. So she forgets about the conversations we have had before - important conversations - with Kaplan, about her prognosis, and the (dwindled) options and consequences. So she will have a question, which inevitably leads to clarification, more questions (because she is having a harder time following things too), and getting into the deep end rather quickly. I then end up feeling like the bad guy because I am informing her of difficult things (which she has heard and processed before), which makes her emotional, and then of course that makes me emotional. So she gets traumatized, I get re-traumatized, and the whole thing is a mess. It happened again this morning. This is not the first time, nor will be the last. This is one part of the job I'd rather delegate to Kaplan and team entirely - but he is not available 24x7 or whenever the mood strikes her to dig into it. So I'm "it", and it bites.

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