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| Category: Health:Medicine:Cancer |
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| About the Book | |
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How do you tell children that their mother has just died? What do you say to a man wanting to join the breast cancer support group? How do you respond to a grieving widower who is so angry about the death of his wife that he has left menacing notes inside the hospital's waiting room magazines? And through it all, how do you keep your heart open to the suffering of those around you, and show up to do it again the next day? These are just a few of the stories that make up the second installment of The Tales Trilogy, the creative, non-fiction account of a nurse behaviorist working in an academic cancer research center. Her pager provides the literary device that moves her from one patient care scenario to the next, encountering people who are trying not merely to survive their illnesses, but to transcend them. In a world shaped by suffering, serious illness offers each of us an opportunity to learn about ourselves, to become more expansive, to open our hearts to our own suffering and to the suffering of others. These stories of healing demonstrate how using the illness journey can help us to hold ourselves larger, and to emerge at even higher levels of wellness. Healing is the intentionality to do just that. And healing is what this book is very much concerned with. Rancour's description of the therapeutic use of self stands in stark contrast to today's high tech world of sickness care. While reliance on telemetry, pharmacotherapy, genomics, and nano-technology can often give people the illusion of progress, it can also usher in a world of increasingly ambiguous ethical and moral decision-making which, for many patients and their families, only intensifies suffering. The only real antidote to suffering is compassion and meaning-making. Tenderly talking to people about facing down their deepest fears, fears about losing parts of their bodies, what will become of them when they die, and even how to live within the confines of the limitations such illnesses impose upon them is not for the faint of heart. This book skillfully weaves stories that demonstrate how such compassion is actually put to the test in the service of healing all in the midst of the profusion of technology that can at times create its own nightmares for the people who must navigate through it. And as all this is transpiring inside the hospital, The Pager Chronicles Volume II unfolds against the backdrop of 9/11, pitting the intimate tales of people attempting to transcend their personal encounters with death against the backdrop of the millennial Armageddon engulfing an entire world. The perfect gift for that special nurse in your life or a thoughtful read for seriously ill patients. Consider giving The Pager Chronicles, Volumes I and II.
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| About the Author | |
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Patrice Rancour is a mental health clinical nurse specialist who has worked in the field of mental health for over 35 years as a clinician, educator and consultant. She has a private counseling practice, publishes in her field and presents at conferences. For more information, check her website. |