It's a sad reality

I came across an article this morning that made me cry. It was about a writer who accompanied her grandmother to the hospital for chemo treatment. While she was sitting at the waiting lounge,she observed the other cancer patients. The writer described the various expressions from the faces of each patient.As she was observing them one by one trying to understand the situation they were in,her eyes came across a bunch of children wearing masks and a scarf to cover their bald heads. And upon seeing how young these patients were, tears fell from her eyes. These poor children should not be worrying about their lives...they should be at the park playing with other kids,or at school learning about the world we live in. And halfway through the article, I began to cry knowing exactly what the writer was trying to convey. Everyday at work,I come across a dozen of cancer patients of various ages. But what struck me the most when I read the article,was the fact that I have also encountered little kids with cancer. I had not realized the extent of my behavior towards them until now. I just looked at those kids the same way I looked at all the other patients at the hospital. I treated them the same way,as if those children weren't dying. As if they understood the severity of their situation. Sometimes,a patient asks a lot of questions and I just vaguely answer them. Remembering how inconsiderate I was of their situation made me cry even more---I should have said " I'm sorry" , I should have explained. I could have given them even a small amount of time to talk because compared to them, I know I have a LOT of time in this world but what they don't have is TIME. They just need someone to talk to because they're scared. They need to know that someone understands them and knows what they're going through. I told my friends at the laboratory about the article I read. They felt the same way as I did because their attitude towards these kind of patients were no different than mine. It took a simple article to remind us that this is part of what we signed up for when we took the job as Medical Technologists and as part of the health care system.