You cannot step into the same river twice. ~ Heraclitus

Just as the river flows along, so too does life. And blogging apparently...

A year has come and gone - who I am now is, I believe, a very different person than who I was a year ago. And yet this blog has always strayed back into my mind and so here I find myself once again. At the same river, but stepping into different waters.

When I tell people that I work with cancer patients, it is obvious that they have no idea what to say to that. The general reaction seems to be something along the lines of "Good for you, that must be so difficult. You must see some hard things." - true statements, but hardly a summary of what I do, what I offer to and receive from this job. I then follow up my initial comment with a statement explaining more about what I do; specialized chemotherapy protocols, in depth assessments of critical patients, stem cell transplants, etc... That gives people more room to work with, something interesting they can ask about; something to focus on that is not the dreaded "c" word - the silent elephant in the room.

Oncology nursing is something that, for me, is infinitely difficult to verbalize. It teaches me so much more than I think I can ever offer back in return. Patience. Perspective. Love; of people, life, myself. Joy. Compassion. And yes, it does on occasion take me to a deep and sorrowful place, where it seems as though all the pain in the world is reflected back at me through the eyes of another human being.

And that would be why I took a hiatus, if you will. I was worried that if I admitted to the the world (haha, if there is anyone who actually reads this) that oncology nursing has some incredibly difficult and painful moments, days, weeks and months, that I would be playing to what everyone already seems to think - that it is depressing, horrible and bleak.

What I have come to realize over the past year is that everything is all about balance. Everything is a smaller version of the bigger picture, the micro to the macro. My job has moments of indescribable depth, to a degree that most people will probably never experience in their lives. In one breath, it can show me a beauty in humanity that I never knew existed and in the next, heart-wrenching grief that takes the colour out of the day.

Both can bring tears to my eyes; neither would exist without the other. And that realization is what brings me back to the edge of this river, watching the waters flow by.