I've been wanting to tell you this

Just a little story to share.

As some of you know I was an ER RN for 15 years and loved my job. I got my cancer diagnosis in June 2010. I tried to work and it only lasted 3 weeks into the radiation/chemo pump when I had to go on LOA. I wasn't able to go back to work. The surgeries and chemo was hard on me and my job required 100%. So after being off work for a year, losing my position that I loved, I tried to go back to a night shift I was given ...which didn't work out. I ended up in a new position at a different hospital in a nearby town. It was so much work to learn my new job as Case Manager and give up bedside nursing. I do love the flexable schedule I now have and feel blessed to have it.

Do you all believe in "things happen for a reason"?

The unit I am on has 37 patients. It's a Med/Surg unit. Daily, there are pt's just out of surgery with our diagnosis...colorectal cancer, new colostomy or temporary ileostomy or different cancers too. (among other health problems). I face daily what I/we went through. I have been asked if its hard to go through over and over, and it's not at all. I just think its strange I ended up there when I wasn't even wanting to leave my other job.

The other thing I wanted to share is this. I don't just talk to everyone about my cancer, but if the situation opens up, I share. So one day at lunch it came up, and one of the girls in her 20's was asking me questions. She said she has been bleeding and wanted to have it checked but her friends and family said its probably a hemorrhoid. I told her that was how I was misdiagnosed for a year and a half before I found out I was staged at 3C rectal cancer. I encouraged her to have it checked, although I admit I was thinking along the hemorrhoid diagnosis.

Well, last week she came to my unit. She had a sigmoidoscopy where they found a large polyp that with pathology came back cancer!! They then rescheduled her for a colonoscopy which came out ok, but OMG! They told her how lucky she was at being so persistant when no one wanted to listen to her. Now she will have all the close following we all have and a chance at a healthy life. But what a lucky girl to have caught it in her 20's.

She hugged me and thanked me and said she would never have pushed the issue if I had not told her my story. After hugs and tears, I felt like I knew why I was led to the job I now work at. If for no other reason, that young girl needed to cross paths with the right person.

peacelove&happiness,gail