About writing a paper

The near week that has past since last time I blogged has been a rough one, at least emotionally.

In school we are currently writing these essays. We are supposed to write three in total, and on mid-october they will randomly pick out one of the three to be handed in as a major exam. Each paper is supposed to be around 3500 words, and we are given a specific patient situation/case and a "problem" we have to answer for each of them. I'm finished with two ; the first was on general psychology and the 2nd was on "overall rehabilitation". It's funny how I've drawn on just as much personal experience as nurse literature in writing these papers - I've been an admittet psychiatric patient and I've been in rehabilitation, a lot of the aspects we've been lectured on or read about, I have experienced. "I've been there, maaaaan". Some times it feels very paradoxical, before I was on the other side, I was the patient. Now I'm supposed to be the helper, the one with the answers, the knowledge, the provider of help and support.

This monday we were given the patient case and problem for this last paper, and this one hit particularly close to home. I've been dreading it ever since the semester started, because I knew the topic of this last essay was going to be "care for the dying patient". And to make it even worse the case had to be about a terminal cancer patient. It's already been 10 months since I sat by Mats deathbed, but its very much something I struggle with every day, and why I am in therapy again. In many ways I struggle more with it now than I did in the first few months after. And now I have to sit here and write an essay where I have to describe the illness they call cancer, its symptoms, why it kills, I have to write about pain and pain management, what the term "palliative care" entails and describe all its aspects. When I was with Mats I was a next-of-kin so to speak, I was as close and personal to the situation as humanly possible, but now I should try to look at palliative care with professional nurse-goggles. Of course I will meet dying patients, and cancer patients, in my work as a nurse in the future, I have to learn to deal with it. And I have the dubious advantage of having had personal experience with it, giving me invaluable insights into a very difficult subject. These are all things I could try to take comfort in, things that could make writing this essay easier. But it doesn't. Every time I sit down with this essay, Mats is constantly on my mind. Or, more specifically, my last weeks and days with him - I relive them over and over, the emotions I had, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the mood.

To top it all of they've made the "problem" for this essay as wide and general as they possibly could. I could probably have written a doctorate based on the case and that problem. So I have to narrow in the paper, leave things out, and I still haven't quite managed to figure out what. All aspects affect each other, and to me they all seem as important; the physical, the emotional, the social, the spiritual. And I have a lot to talk about on this subject, a lot of thoughts and opinions. Oh well. I'll get through it. It's just making my life very hard right now.