What if you know your patient?

Hi guys,

Sarah is doing a great job of keeping you up to date about UNC, and it is really nice to have a "buddy" going through the internship with me. Thanks Sarah! One interesting thing that happened to me this week is that I walked in to the room of someone I knew. Actually I know the son, and it was his mom who was the patient, but he was in the room when we arrived. I felt completely freaked out, even though I knew that this was a possibility since I am at a local site. I imagine my acquaintance was pretty freaked out also, but we both kept it together and said hello. He introduced me to his mom and brother, told them we went "way back", and then our preceptor did an initial assessment on her. Alas we did oncology last week so the poor woman does not have a good prognosis. And her son is someone I know through my kids' school, so I probably won't see him until the fall (given that I am getting in early and leaving late, I won't be at school the rest of the year) when, I worry, it seems likely his mom will have passed away :(

General question for those who end up seeing cancer patients: does your hospital follow a neutropenic diet for patients with low neutrophil counts? UNC does, it restricts fresh fruits and vegetables and black pepper added after cooking, even though the RD we were working with said there was no research showing the benefit of a neutropenic diet.

Overall, oncology was sad because cancer is so random and unfair, but the patients we saw all had remarkably good attitudes and were much easier to talk to than the cardiac patients the first week, who were pretty grumpy and did not want to hear about heart healthy and low sodium diets! On to renal next week, we've heard renal patients are grumpy too! Hope you all have a day off on Monday. Enjoy.