Daily life on the cancer ward (where Nadia is recovering from her bone marrow transplant) keeps me drawing comparisons to what I would imagine it would be like on a warzone military base. It is mostly boring, and boring is good. The combatants (patients) require a lot of logistical support – feeding, cleaning, sleeping, scouting for the enemy (blood samples, routine vital signs, urine samples, etc), and monitoring and improving defenses (in our cases medications). The routine is carefully planned out each day with military precision, 24 hours a day, and can change on a moment’s notice, and that is OK and expected. Hurry up and wait.
And we all hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. When things go wrong they can go wrong pretty fast. The logistical support people suddenly become front-line fighters and rush to their action stations. The enemies vary from cancer, to viruses, to bacteria, to infections. All of a sudden the years of training and experience come to the forefront, and lives are saved. Through skill, knowledge, precision, and logistics, the combatants live to fight another day, and eventually return home to family.
And the sad, sobering truth is that not all the soldiers make it out alive. We recently experienced our fist loss on the ward, and it was hard.
But we will get through this.
We will soldier on.
We will get through this together.
