It's a particularly quiet evening here on ward 61. I'm coming to the end of a shift (it's 11.30pm) and there's not much to do. I've just read today's papers and had a flick through the trashy magazines that tend to migrate to the ward desk, and it's nearly time to go home.

When i think (I mean REALLY think) about what happens here i'm amazed. 61 specializes in cancer care, we see people newly diagnosed and those in their last days. People generally react in the same way when i tell them what i do..."that must be really depressing" is the common comment. It's not depressing. Even my 2 years at the hospice was not depressing. Challenging, maybe. Fulfilling, definitely. But with one draw-back - I have become immune to death. I don't mean that i'm not going to die...i mean that death of others really doesn't phase me at all. I was introduced to the reality of death when i was 9 when my father died of cancer. Maybe that's why i do this, because i remember feeling acutely aware of my inability to do anything to help him, to save him. Now I can help. I can comfort, advise, encourage, empathise, relieve. What i can't do is grieve.

This was made clear to me when a colleage of mine died suddenly last month. She was young, engaged to be married and a poular member of staff here. One day she didn't show up for her shift and we found out she'd died. We'll never know why or how, I don't think we really want to know, but it has affected the staff here in different ways. Her name is still on the off-duty, still on the team board. It's as if she's still here, just on a long stretch of leave. But getting on with it is what we do best. People get sick, people die but there is still work to be done.

Maybe it's denial. Maybe death is so real to me that i've constructed a bubble-wrap shield for myself so it remains a distant reality, something to help other people with. I just hope that when my time comes there will be people, like the people I work with, who will ease my fears and ease my pain.

This posting has become a little intense - sorry. Thats what you get when you start to think at midnight.