Cancer sucks

The thing that has been on my mind recently is my work. I seem to be taking my work home with me and by that I mean in an emotional, mental way. I am a nurse at a wonderful hospital and I work on the "Advanced Brain and Spine" unit. Something new to me. The majority of my nursing experience has dealt with telemetry patients. Patients who come in with chest pain, heart attacks, etc. Where I work now, we deal with people who have come in with strokes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis (who would have thought I would have ended up in a place like that...not me), headaches, spine surgeries, well basically anything that has to do with neurology. The group of people that has really impacted me is the people that come in with cancer. A lot of them are young with only a couple of symptoms that any of us could have such as headache, nausea and vomiting (sounds likes the migraines I get). They get an MRI, find out they have brain tumors, get operated (if it's operable) and then come to our floor. I have never dealt with this type of population before. It scares me, has me searching for scientific answers, has me asking God why these things happen, has me crying on the way home. I think the reason why this type of population affects me the most is because besides having family members with cancer and having the cancer gene, they did nothing (excluding cancer from smoking) to get the cancer. They are just like you and me going along, living life and then get side swiped and their life will never be the same.

*As I type this I make the connection as to why I am passionate about this...it's the same story that all multiple sclerosis patients have. Maybe that is why I feel for them like I do....

They are now labeled. Have you ever had cancer? Yes. Check off that box.

It's so easy to just focus on the patient but you have to remember that they have spouses, kids, extended family and friends that this also affects. It's not a disease that kills one at a time but kills dreams, kills joy, hope...laughter.
It's a horrible disease.

I have a fire deep within me now to know more about this dream killer. I know there is talk of things you can do outside of the medicine realm. I have read about Kris Carr and how she is living and beating stage 4 cancer without chemotherapy and radiation, for 10 years now. I want to equip myself with the tools I need to educate myself as well as people I know on things you can do to prevent (if possible) and treat cancer.