Empathy

Today, I learned a valuable lesson of empathy. The patient that I spent time with was a 10 year old cancer patient who had been in the hospital for 6 months. After talking to her, I found out that she was the second child in the family who had been diagnosed with this form of cancer. Her older sister was not as lucky, and had passed away a year after she was diagnosed. I couldn’t believe the story that she was telling me. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what her parents must be going through. To lose a child is horrific. To have another child be diagnosed with the same form of cancer is every parent’s worse nightmare. This patient’s mom was in the room while I was visiting with her daughter, and as soon as her daughter fell asleep, I could see tears beginning to stream down her face. I sat down with the patient’s mom, and tried to comfort her. I told her that this past summer, I nearly lost my father because he needed a liver transplant, but had to wait for an organ to become available. I cried every day for almost 2 weeks, fearing that I would lose my dad. From my experience, I felt that I needed to share my story with this patient’s mother, because I knew exactly how she felt – to be afraid of losing someone that I love. I could empathize with her, because I had been in a similar situation. After we finished talking, she thanked me, telling me how grateful she was to have had our conversation. I felt like I hadn’t been able to help much, but she reassured me that I did.