What was I thinking?

What was I thinking? About the second round of chemo, I decide to make soup. But not just any soup — cauliflower and blue cheese soup. Any idea how that might go down with a chemo patient? Let me tell you. Not well. She got sick just from the smell in the house. I threw out the soup and sat on the steps outside crying, partly out of frustration, partly out of sadness and partly because I was taking care of myself.


I wanted to be the very best caregiver I could, but I quickly realized that to do that I needed to take care of myself – physically, mentally and emotionally. That’s why I cried on the steps after the soup faux pas. It helped me cope, refocus and find another recipe. In fact I bought a recipe book on how to cook for a chemotherapy patient.

We became well versed in a world and a language that was once foreign: MRIs, CT scans, neutropenia, blood counts…

The last scheduled chemo was on a February 14 — Valentine’s Day. Not a very romantic activity. I wasn’t going to let chemo stop me from being romantic though. Kim’s Mom took her to her treatment. I arranged to use the office of a clinical trial nurse we knew at the cancer clinic to change into my Elvis suit. Armed with a dozen roses and closely followed by a group of curious nurses, I made my way to the chemo room and serenaded my sweetheart and offered her the roses. Afterwards, I made the rounds of the chemo room sticking tiny paper hearts on patients and taking requests. I even made an appearance in the waiting room. It certainly made for a very different chemo treatment that day.

In the beginning…

In the beginning…I found it!
The lump on my wife’s breast that is… We were shocked and a little anxious. We wasted no time booking a medical appointment. We started scanning the Internet for information. We sat down with the surgeon who led us through the patient decision tree. But at that point nothing had been confirmed.

The call came while on summer holidays. It’s cancer! “We can fit you in for surgery next week (because of a cancelation) or we can do it in two months.” Kim decided on now. You can’t really put yourself in someone else’s shoes, at least not while they are still in them. So I didn’t try.
What could I do?

Demonstrate courage and support, but allow yourself to be sad. We certainly cried together at the beginning, but it helped us deal with…well the cards being dealt I guess.
Surgery went well, but there were lymph nodes involved so radiation and chemotherapy were necessary. More Internet searching… more information sessions… more sadness…
So what could I do?

I went to every appointment. I took notes (Kim did as well). We drew up a list of questions. We asked them all. We consulted friends. We talked to nurses. I cooked up some nice meals (more later on what not to do). We did all the normal activities we could. We just worked around the appointments and the treatments and the side effects and the stops at the pharmacy and the fatigue. Those were realities now, and we didn’t deny them, we just didn’t focus on them unduly. There were too many other parts of life to focus on — friends, fresh air, a warm bed, you name it!

A Preamble

After my wife died of cancer-related illness in 2007, I was not very interested in getting involved with anything connected to cancer.

Recently I started giving more thought to what it means to believe in a cause. That got me thinking to all the people I know who have been touched by cancer in one way or another. When you hear some of the stories you just get inspired and it lights a spark somewhere inside you.

There is a saying that people don’t invest in institutions, they invest in people and ideas they believe in. That’s how I felt when I decided to put together a University of Ottawa team for the Alterna Do It For Dad event on June 20. The honorary chair of the event is Allan Rock. I remember when I first heard Allan tell his personal story about prostate cancer. Suddenly, it was no longer the president of a university talking; it was a fellow human being sifting through the life-changing implications of having cancer.

I was asked to tell my story, but I don’t have cancer. Still, I feel that I have something to share. For ten years I was as close to cancer you can be without actually having it. I learned lots about myself, about what’s important and about what’s not and about what it means to be a caregiver.

And the journey continues…

Tim's courage became my strength

When I graduated High school all I knew was that I liked sciences and people. I took a year off after high school to coach cheerleading and work at the local Tim Hortons. During that year, I dated a local boy, and one night at a local minor league hockey game his little brother, 14 at the time, just collapsed on the ice during his shift. He had been tired lately and had funny bruises, turns out that trip to the ER that night showed he had Leukemia.

He spent months at the Alberta Childrens’ Hospital, and the nights that I was visiting I really liked the nurses and wondered how they did it. Then one day in the cancer clinic I watched a nurse access his central line (port o cath) and at that very moment I thought I really want to do that (and vaguely remember announcing it to the entire clinic!), and the rest is history. I enrolled in nursing school and knew from day one I wanted to work with kids with Cancer. I was honoured to actually get to work with most of the nurses that cared for him and got to Thank the nurse who accessed his port for inspiring me to pursue nursing.

I was blown away by Tim’s courage and strength throughout his battle with leukemia. I never once saw him negative, even when he was so sick. He made the doctors discharge him early from the hospital so he could be a groomsmen for his Brothers’ wedding and he never once said he was tired, when we all knew he was exhausted. He went on to ride his bike across Canada to raise funds and awareness for Pediatric Cancers. www.spokemantour.com I was completely inspired and humbled by his determination and drive, and knew that I wanted to work with kids just like him. And I have for the past 3 years and they inspire me daily. If those kids only knew how much they teach us all about the beauty of life.

A poem for the nurses out there

Here is a little poem. Nurse’s week is next week and I really want to recognize all the amazing contributions nurses make in the lives of their patients!

I develop relationships with my patients
Sometimes I get bodily fluids on my clothes, and that’s okay
I comfort the grieving
I am patient
I do the dirty work
Everyone I work with daily is very capable and effective
I see people as people, not cases, not statistics
I live and breathe life and death
I see people at their most vulnerable
I can draw blood so carefully that you barely even feel it
I facilitate healing
I CARE
I do what needs to be done
I Love wearing scrubs
I have given someone their first bath;
And I have given someone their last bath
~anonymous~
I am inspired daily by each and every one of you,
And am blessed to work with such passionate nurses!

Why I love my job.

What do I love about being a pediatric oncology nurse? First and foremost the kids! I am inspired by their strength and courage every day.

Work is like another family to me. Oncology is different, our kids aren’t short stays at the hospital, some of them are there for months at a time. I have the opportunity to build lasting relationships with kids and their families. I am there to give them their chemotherapy, watch them battle through the nausea and fatigue and everything else that goes with chemotherapy, but I’m also there to celebrate recovering blood counts, birthdays, and sometimes even the arrival of new baby siblings! I get to watch a mini hockey game between a child and his grandfather in the hospitals hallway and I get to keep score. I even get to see Santa and his reindeer deliver gifts on Christmas Eve and see the trail of cookie crumbs and carrot bits leftover from what the kids had left outside their rooms!

I love that these families, unknowingly, keep me humble and remind me of what is really important. I am blown away that somehow these kids and families make the best of every situation, and normalize life in the hospital. Vitals every 4 hours, medication after medication, bloodwork every day at 4am. Test after test, procedure after procedure, and no matter what, you’ll always see a smile on that child’s face, maybe not that day, maybe not that week, but you’ll see it soon enough!

I love the sense of community that exists at work. Families come together, find strength in each others stories and struggles. The unit is like a little cul-de-sac, and every room is a house. Kids still nock on each others doors to come play and they still ride their tricycles around the unit, with speed limits enforced of course!

Most of all, I love that I get to share all of these experience, the good, the bad, the happy and the sad with incredible nurses. People sometimes wonder why nurses are “clicky”, we share a lot in a 12 hour shift together you know, we couldn’t run a hospital without such strong teamwork! No to mention it may be one of the only jobs where talking about bowels at any given time is completely acceptable!

My name is Kim. I'm a nurse a CHEO.

My name is Kim McMillan and I’ve been in the “Cancer World” for 3 years now. My role is a Pediatric Oncology/ Bone Marrow transplant Nurse. I started at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary as a new graduate 3 years ago this Month. I worked in Calgary where we cared for children with all types of cancer and provided stem cell transplants for children with a type of leukemia that is most responsive to transplants.

I have also enjoyed working as a camp Nurse at Cancer Camp in the summers, especially out at the Camp Horizon site in Kananaskis. It’s humbling to see patients, their siblings and any other children affecting by cancer at camp, learning, growing and having fun. It’s a beautiful thing to see children I cared for in the hospital at their sickest times now out playing and laughing and loving life just like any other kid.

After 2 years of Calgary I decided I wanted to explore the rest of Canada, as travelling is my passion, and I am blessed to have a job that allows me to do that. After chatting with my long distance best friend who had always lived in Ottawa, and professes it is the most beautiful city in Canada I decided I should see for myself! I packed up my things, and drove out to Ottawa in late August and with the help of my best friend, I had an apartment waiting for me when I got here. I’m pretty sure my best friend was right, Ottawa is beautiful!

I am currently working at CHEO in the inpatient oncology unit and have been since September 2009. It’s great to see how another hospital works, the similarities and the differences when caring for the same population of Patients. The nurses, as with any oncology unit I have worked on are wonderful, amazing and always inspiring!
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition....and you'll learn why!