Nadine arrived safely in palliative care at the Katharinenhospital today and occupied room 16 on floor D6. She feels way better because the holistic approach followed there suits her very much. The atmosphere is way more emotional and relaxed and the plan for the next few days is to calm her down and to structure her daily life. After this happened, there will be an interdisciplinary reconsideration of her treatment plan.

One thing she is really fond of is music therapy, she already enjoyed a session today. Here is one of the songs that had the power to comfort her during the troublesome last weeks:

P.S.: The tote bag Nadine is resting her head on has nothing to do with palliative care. It stems from a shop in Barcelona for sustainable and natural design she likes. She is using it as her handbag in hospital right now.

Nadine’s radiation treatment began on December 18. With the plan to restart after Christmas, she was temporarily released from hospital on December 23. A nice idea, but it  didn’t go well. Her accompanying dose of cortisone was too heavy and Nadine encountered nasty psychic side-effects that turned Christmas at home into sheer hell.  Let me spare you the details but to me it felt like her personality got sputtered step by step.

In a weird state of mind she ended up in the “Center for the Sanity of the Soul” in Bad Cannstatt – what an esoteric name for clinical psychiatry! Getting assigned to a closed station sounds horrible, but was the best thing that could happen in the situation given. The doctors who diagnosed a steroid psychosis  worked real miracles on her. They improved Nadine’s medication by reducing the cortisone and countering side-effects with other drugs that leveled her erratic moods. To me, it was almost unbelievable how fast she went better. After a stay of less than two days, she will be transferred back to the Katharinenhospital tomorrow where the essential radiation therapy is to be continued.

In the bigger picture nothing has changed: Nadine is still seriously ill and has to fight advanced breast cancer. Nevertheless, this episode gave me hope because I witnessed at first hand what professional treatment can do to help people.

P.S.: The picture above was not taken when her sister Annika and me carried her to the ‘soul center’ on December 28 – we are no morons who don’t know better than shooting pictures in serious situations. I took it a day later when she felt way better and returned from a walk outside. That she appears blurry on the photo was not intended but  symbolizes the state of mind she is recovering from.