“I have a friend, a chemotherapy nurse in a children’s cancer ward, who’s job it is to pry for any available vein in an often emaciated arm to give infusions of chemicals that sometimes last as long is 12 hours and which are often quite discomforting to the child. He is probably the greatest pain giver the children meet in their stay in the hospital. Because he has worked so much with his own pain, his heart is very open. He works with his responsibilities in the hospital as a “laying on of hands with love and acceptance.” There is a little in him that causes him to withdraw, that reinforces the painfulness of the experience for the children. He is a warm, open space, which encourages them to trust whatever they feel. And it is he whom the children most ask for at the time they are dying. Although he is the main pain-giver, he’s also the main love-giver.”
–Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, How Can I Help? (Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p.86
