Career Choices

What do you do in an average day?

In the words of my godson, “I look after very poorly people.” All the patients I am referred have a life limiting illness, predominantly cancer, but increasingly other end stage diseases. A typical day starts at the hospice at 8 am (time to catch up on correspondence relatively uninterrupted). Today is outpatients clinic. I spend an hour with a very distressed 44 year old woman with metastatic terminal breast cancer and her husband. He wants to visit the United States for a second opinion; she wants quality of life and good palliation. They both shed tears, but leave saying that they feel much better. Physical pain is relatively easy to palliate; emotional pain and conflict are much more difficult. A Macmillan nurse and a GP phone for advice, and the senior house officer and registrar discuss inpatients while I eat my sandwich. I leave for the hospital where I work with three Macmillan nurses. We discuss new patients from the site specific multidisciplinary meetings--newly diagnosed patients often …