First

Today I went for my first real time face-to-face counselling! Oh my goodness! When I received a phone call from Sr Jocelyn to go down to the private women clinic to meet a patient, I said okay and was on my way...then half way there, I realised that I forgot to ask her what is it regarding...then when I reached the clinic, I looked for Sr Jocelyn and asked her what is the matter, she filled me in and I was shocked! I really was...oh in case you don't know what I am doing, I am a Case Management Officer, in charge of assessing women with gynaecological cancer...

She told me that Prof Low just broke news to the patient that she has to undergo chemotherapy and hence she is crying frantically...so I went to look for the patient...when I saw her sitting next to her son, she was not crying at the moment, but then when I brought her to an empty room to talk, she immediately broke down in tears...gosh gosh gosh! What am I supposed to do?! I don't have any hands on experience at all in these kind of situation! Even if I took a counselling module back in Melbourne, I don't think I am qualified to handle such case without supervision...I was freaking out then...then I told myself to keep calm and just talk to her as per normal...

So started off asking her how is she feeling and she cried...oh my! Did I say something wrong? I hope I don't and hope that I would be able to calm her down...so then I passed her a box of tissue and it finished within minutes, luckily I found another box in the room...

Then asked her about her feelings, she asked why all these happens to her and that she has to go through all these, she said that she had check ups very frequently and how come when they detected it, it is already quite late stage...then I tried to explain that it might be an acute cancer (gosh, I really don't know how come all these information came to me), I told her I am not sure but it could be a possibility...and said that there are people who suffer from these acute cancer too, nothing detected and when it is detected, it is already quite terrible...she quieten a bit while listening to some amateur trying to cheat her way through...=S

And then she said that she is worried that she will be a burden to her family and that she is scared of the chemotherapy and she heard chemotherapy is a very painful experience...I told her I am not sure how the chemotherapy would be, but she could check things out with the medical oncologist team when she meet them...and I also told her not to think that she will be a burden to her family, also told her that she shouldn't think that chemotherapy is terrible but instead to think that it is a step that she should take to be fully recovered...even though she already had a surgery...she is sad also because of this, as she thought that after her surgery she would be okay but how come she still has to go through chemotherapy...I told her that there are cases like that too...and that if the doctor ordered for chemotherapy then it would probably be a way for her to get well...I think I bullshit a lot on that day...

Then she will stop crying for a while when I was explaining to her and told her some cases of patients who are in the similar situation...maybe she felt better when she learnt that she is not alone but when we go back to the topic of chemotherapy etc, she started crying again...so in order to put her mind at ease, I asked her to think of questions to ask the medical team about her chemotherapy and what she could foresee during the chemotherapy and some other information she would like them to provide...told her that if she were to understand the procedure and know what to expect, she would be much better prepared...right? Anyway, talked to her for almost an hour and my stomach started to grumble as it was already 12+ noon...and I noticed that she is a bit more stable, I told her not too think too much about the negative things and just focus her mind on coming up with questions to ask for the time being until she meets the team the next day...she said okay and I brought her out and walked both her and the son out...

Phew...what a day...throughout the whole session, I kept telling myself to stay calm and not to be drawn into her emotions as I am so afraid that I would cry with her! Luckily I didn't...although I don't think I did a good job here but I am happy that I actually get to experience something real and that I hope it could help me in the future if I were to encounter such incident again...

Last words: Hope she is okay and that this experience could help enhance my future ones...