Something from the classics for you - also about season and dying.

That time of year thou mayst in my behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet bird sang.

In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, the seals up all in rest.

In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
consumed with that which it was nourished by.

(from Shakespeare’s sonnet 73)

For the first time, we are now dealing with a family member with cancer, as my aunt was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last week.

I’ll be visiting my aunt, and this blog a bit more often..

I’m a regular reader of the Cheerful Oncologist’s Blog. He’s chosen an emotionally difficult field in which to practice medicine, and shares inisight into his experience through his writing. I suspect that he deals well with patients who are about

[…
The Cheerful Oncologist has posted a bit of poetry for our pleasure, but it was his prose between the verses that rent my heart:

Finally, just as our journey reaches a pleasant equilibrium between labor and comfort, night falls in the middle of the afternoon … ]

Poetry within Poetry

That should be on your office wall …

I so love your blog. It is good to know there are oncs out there who think about these things and don’t simply see us patients as another can of dog food on their assembly line.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep
“But I have promises to keep
“And miles to go before I sleep,
“And miles to go before I sleep.”
-R. Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”