Pamela and the rest of the Radiation Oncology team at UCSD Moores Cancer Center provided skill, caring, and magic while working to save my life.

by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris ~

“These nurses so rock,” said teddies Philo and Amiga.

During both of my internal radiation (brachytherapy) days to fight endometrial cancer, I was lucky to have a whole tribe of magic fairy doctors, nurses, and staff.

Doubt if you will, but I insist they are magic fairies. How else could they help me sail through procedures that otherwise would have been pure torture—radioactive needles and cylinders stuck into my lady parts for six hours each day??? And all that made even more gnarly by my emotional baggage as a survivor of past sexual violence. Yikes!

Admittedly, the UCSD Moores Cancer Center Radiation Oncology team’s exceptionally high level of skill and caring had a great deal to do with how smoothly things went, but there had to be some magic in there too.

As just one example, there was Pamela, my main nurse on both days. What was Pamela’s magic, and why do I love her? Ah, let me count the ways…

. Laughed at my feeble jokes, which grew goofier as the day progressed.

. Claimed her outfit was for an office holiday costume contest. (But we know it’s a magic fairy suit.)

. Calm and confident—knew exactly what she was doing—but deliberate and gentle, never brisk or jerky.

Magic nurse with magic smile

. Lowered my stress by telling me everything she was going to do before she did it.

. Kept any unnecessarily exposed parts of me covered.

. Remembered my picky likes/dislikes from one week to the next.

. Noticing that I had covered my eyes with a sheet, she made a general announcement to all the other nurses/staff (magic fairies) to please keep the lights in my patient bay dimmed.

. The lights on her suit sparkled up my patient bay with softly glowing colors and made me feel I had been spirited off to the fairy tribe’s magical secret healing lair. (OK, maybe that was the drugs talking.)

. Offered me additional pain meds at just the right time, except I insisted I was perfectly fine and didn’t need any more, which turned out to be colossally stupid. Half an hour later the pain hit, and hit hard. Instead of saying “See, I told you so,” Pamela blamed herself. “Oh no,” she moaned in genuine dismay, “I wish I had pushed you more.” Now that’s a caring fairy. Then she rushed off to get me the meds.

. At the end of the day she gently cleaned my lady parts, bottom, and thigh area, so I wouldn’t go home messy. As a dog rescuer, that’s one of the ways I judge the level of caring from a veterinarian—when they take a little extra time to clean up the animal after a procedure—to help preserve their sense of well-being and dignity.

Fairies are creative.

Pamela passed that and all other tests with softly glowing, flying fairy colors.

Bravo to Moores Cancer Center for hiring highly skilled, caring, and magical nurses like Pamela. Along with the rest of their Radiation Oncology fairy tribe, she helped turn what might have been dark and miserable hours for me into days of light, healing, and love.

If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.

Katerina Lorenzatos Makris is a career journalist, author, and editor. Her fiction includes 17 novels for Simon and Schuster, E.P. Dutton, Avon, and other major publishers (under the name Kathryn Makris), as well as a teleplay for CBS-TV, and a short story for The Bark magazine. She has written hundreds of articles for regional wire services and for outlets such as National Geographic Traveler, The San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales, NBC’s Petside.com, RescueDiva.com, AnimalIssuesReporter.com, and Examiner.com (Animal Policy Examiner).

Together with coauthor Shelley Frost, Katerina wrote a step-by-step guide for hands-on, in-the-trenches dog rescue, Your Adopted Dog: Everything You Need to Know About Rescuing and Caring for a Best Friend in Need (The Lyons Press).