|
Margaret's Angels
|
The London Regional Cancer
Program
http://www.lhsc.on.ca/About_Us/LRCP/
|
|
We were referred by our family physician to
the Programme at Victoria Hospital. A haematologist and team
were assigned to us by a physician’s selection committee and we
began a new journey in our life. It is not my intention here to
tell you about the dramatic, and often surprisingly positive,
changes that this event has brought about in our personal lives
but rather to explain something important about which most
people are unaware, something which provides a strong basis for
coping with the uncertainty, and involves the amazing people on
the LRCP staff and their volunteer partners. |
|
First of all, the entire programme is well
organized in a cheerful modern well-lighted comfortable building
designed to provide the least amount of emotional strain for the
patients. While you are awaiting treatment or a test or simply
a doctor appointment in the comfortable expansive lobby you are
encouraged to help yourself to free coffee or tea and cookies
or, if you prefer something more elaborate, you can order from
the Tim Horton’s booth located on the same floor. To learn more
about your illness you also have the opportunity to visit the
Library on the main level and receive free reading material and
audio-visual items. If I were asked to describe the office and
medical staff in a few well-chosen words they would be -
compassionate, understanding, patient, pleasant, and friendly to
the point of calling you by your first name and happy to have
you do the same in return. The term “professional” obviously
applies as well in this type of situation but often when we hear
that word we think of structured sterile phrases such as –
official rules, by the book, business-like, etc, - but that
terminology, or attitude in this instance, is about as far from
the truth as is possible. My wife and I kid each other that the
nurses are really a “band of angels” dressed as nurses and we
refer to the chemotherapy section, tongue in cheek, as the
“Victoria Hilton”. |
|
Previous Page |
Next Page |
|