Beside you in time
Brain cancer: a perspective of a nurse practitioner, wife, and now widow
Our Love Story with Brain Cancer
This is the true story of a married couple in their mid 30’s who found a way to live their best lives and love each other deeply every day despite the ticking time bomb of brain cancer.
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The brain is a beautiful and complex enigma of the central nervous system (CNS). The central nervous system is comprised of the brain and spinal cord. The brain is big processing center and the the spinal cord relays information between our brain and the nerves in the other areas of our bodies. The skull and
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Having worked in various roles in healthcare since 2009, I’ve been exposed to all sorts of interesting people and situations. With patients and families you’re often seeing them during the darkest and most difficult times in their life. If you’re lucky, you might see them on the happiest days of their life as they welcome
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People in healthcare are often interesting humans. Like any number of professions, healthcare often has lots of stereotypes associated with specific roles. Surgeons are often stereotyped as arrogant and crass. Oncologists are often stereotyped as kind and overly optimistic. Psychiatrists are often stereotyped as quirky but good listeners. Nurses are either stereotyped as angles or
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Monday, July 30th, 2018 started out a little groggy. We were both a little wiped from our weekend trip to Bloomington. However, we both were excited to get back to work like normal people. I had a fairly normal day working on the wards. Dustin’s day was also fairly normal. Whenever Dustin gets home from
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It was Friday, July 27, 2018 and we were preparing ourselves for our weekend trip to Bloomington, Indiana to visit family and friends. This wasn’t our ordinary trip where we had loose plans to see people but would be generally fun and easy going. This the trip to our hometown to tell Dustin’s mom that
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Family is a difficult topic for me to discuss. My relationships with my family are very complex. I have a lovely relationship with the majority of our family but not everyone. I love my family even if I don’t like them. But I don’t need to be best friends with someone just because they are
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After getting discharged a second time after getting a blood patch for a spinal CSF leak, we still had a lot of trips to the hospital for appointments over the next week. I still hadn’t been contacted to set up Dustin’s follow up appointments with a neurologist, so I worked on the consults my attendings
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One of the things that initially attracted us to each other was our love for music. Not just any music, but Nine Inch Nails. We both had a profound love for industrial synth rock. Loud, weird, electronic rock has so many complex layers that resonates with so many parts of your soul. Some of our
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I’m combing through my brain of what the actual fuck is wrong with Dustin. I have to put aside that he’s my husband. The pesky fact remains that he’s the love of my life and I’m terrified. So I have to turn off wife mode and turn on provider mode. I start with the facts
Beside you in time 