"Unimpressed with the treatment received"

My parent was diagnosed with cancer a few months ago, towards the end of that month my parent was told they had 2-6 weeks left to live. There are no words to describe our shock, disbelief and numbness at this prognosis. We decided at my parent’s request we would take them home to care for them there.

We had Palliative Nurses visit our home. Although knowledgeable, I felt one of the nurses was not at all empathetic to our situation. We understand that nurses may see these situations all the time, but this was our parent, our family and our lives that have been torn apart. They made comments that were, in my opinion, not appropriate and even after asking them to stop, continued to speak disrespectfully towards us. This nurse may have had the knowledge for this profession but without any kind of empathy, none of that mattered.

There was nothing we could do to help my parent’s prognosis, we knew we had brought them home to die. Nurses that are in these positions to help families go through what we went through MUST have the skills to be able to consider the families' emotions. I feel it was an unfair and cruel treatment of our family.

This nurse made our family feel anxious and helpless when we should have felt supported and cared for.