Nurse's 40 years in cancer care a ‘privilege'
A cancer specialist nurse who lost her father to the disease is continuing to support patients after her retirement from the wards.
Tricia Timms is a Macmillan call centre nurse based in Portishead, Somerset, who began her career in 1985 at Southmead Hospital and Weston General Hospital.
Facing retirement three years ago, she chose to provide reassurance and a listening ear to those feeling "petrified and in shock" following a cancer diagnosis.
"There's something special about being with somebody at their darkest hour," she said. "You've made a difference, and that's where the reward is. It's a privilege."
Ms Timms' father died from prostate cancer, which had developed to his liver, just six months after she began her job as a prostate cancer nurse.
"It was quite early in my career when I got this passion for cancer care," she explained.
"I wanted to see if we could stop somebody else having to suffer like that. With any cancer, it's about finding it early and you've got a much better chance."
Ms Timms now supports people "across the scope" from initial diagnosis to palliative care, in addition to loved ones affected by the news.
"It takes an emotional toll on you, we are humans," she admitted.
"We're all qualified and experienced nurses but no matter what, you don't know what you're going to deal with the next day.
"They might be tearful, angry, absolutely petrified, they don't know what to do.
"It's a lifechanging moment when you walk in there and somebody says 'you've got cancer'."
However, Ms Timms said modern medicine has come a long way, and treatments can "work very well and extend people's lifespans".
"[Patients] might feel like everything is taking a long time to get sorted, but we can explain it to them, what's going on in the background," she said.
"Those scans and biopsies need to be looked at to form a picture before they can come up with a treatment plan.
"Give yourself time to get over that shock. Once you know the plan, things are different.'
Follow BBC Somerset on Facebook and X. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
Somerset ovarian cancer survival rates 'incredible'
'Learning to walk again after cancer treatment'
Hospitals using AI to diagnose prostate cancer
Macmillan Cancer Support
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Woman teacher banned for pupil sex and drugs texts
A woman has been banned from teaching after a panel found she sent messages about her sexual encounters to a pupil and encouraged him to smoke cannabis with her. Charlotte Doman, then 32, was teaching history at William Edwards secondary school in Grays, Essex, when her inappropriate contact began. A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel was told she sent messages to the pupil where she called him "little duck" and said to him she loved him, but she denied what she said was romantic. Marc Cavey, TRA chief executive, decided she should be banned from teaching indefinitely, subject to a five-year review period. The TRA heard Ms Doman sent dozens of messages to the child, who the panel referred to as Pupil A, between April and May 2023. In one she said: "You're not even legal or an adult or anything. Like, am I taking advantage of you? Some days it feels like you're taking advantage of me lol." In messages seen by the panel, she told him: "YOU have all the control in this relationship." She also told Pupil A details about her sexual relationships, the panel found, saying in an Instagram message: "One night I ended up with three different guys." She was said to have made comments about the pupil's appearance and messaged him, saying: "I literally go get waxed every eight weeks for no-one to appreciate it." The panel also heard Ms Doman encouraged Pupil A and his friends to "pull sickies" on a day she was off school, and at least once invited Pupil A to spend time alone with her. The now 34-year-old did not attend her misconduct hearing, but in written statements said the "little duck" nickname was "not romantic". She said she was letting the pupil "know that someone cared about his existence" in telling him she loved him. Ms Doman admitted she also encouraged Pupil A to drink alcohol and smoke cannabis with her, and said: "I am unsure why any of this occurred. "I certainly don't behave like this myself. I drink alcohol less than once a month and never to excess, and I've never taken drugs." The teacher also admitted she had sent Pupil A messages outside of school hours and acknowledged she told him to "remove all trace" of her from his phone. Ms Doman denied her conduct was sexually motivated and said she saw Pupil A as "like her child", but the panel ruled on the contrary. It said Ms Doman's behaviour had a "seriously damaging" impact on Pupil A, his parents, the school and its wider community, and her conduct "had the potential to influence Pupil A in a harmful way". Ms Doman was facing "difficulties" in her personal life at the time, the hearing was told, but the panel ruled that she "did not show sufficient insight in respect of the impact her conduct had on others". Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
The Very Gay Life of Edmund White
Edmund White might have invented the unapologetic queer on the page. At least he did for me. Nothing coded gay, vaguely tragic; nothing furtive or metaphorical or obscured behind the billowing curtains of literary flounciness. I can still recall the thrill of spotting the cover of his 1983 novel 'A Boy's Own Story' in a rotating rack of paperbacks in a bookstore in my dull, conservative hometown, Marlborough, England. I must have been about 15. It was the mid-1980s, the thick of the AIDS plague, and gay men were being cast as vectors of their own destruction. It was a complicated time to be thinking about coming out. But here was a novel with a boy on the cover who looked close to my age, his thick glossy hair gently ruffled by the wind, his lips plump, his jaw strong. His tank top revealed the slope of his shoulders, the contours of his biceps. I'd never seen a cover or read a book that spoke to me like that. The fact that a gay teenager could exist in fiction blew my mind. The fact that one, like me, could exist in the world did, too. 'A Boy's Own Story' was daring not just because it placed a queer adolescent at its center, but also because it did so with sophistication, introspection and horniness. The narrator — clearly, as with all of his narrators, based on him — is vividly real. Ed White and I were later to become friends, when I had moved to New York and was editing Out magazine. This was not a surprise: Ed, who died on Tuesday at 85, was always very open to meeting young literary men. He was a raconteur and had stories for miles. I lapped them up. We all did. Talking frankly about sex was a hallmark of his writing.(Among his many nonfiction works was 'The Joy of Gay Sex,' a sex manual he co-wrote in 1977.) He always saw himself as a gay writer for gay readers, the distinction he drew between his generation of queer writers and those who came earlier, like Gore Vidal and James Baldwin. They might write gay characters, but they never seemed to be writing for gay readers. Ed was. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
England without Atkinson but regains Carse and Woakes for first test against India
England's remodeled pace attack lost Gus Atkinson to injury but has regained Chris Woakes and Brydon Carse for the first test against India starting on June 20 in Leeds. With Atkinson ruled out of selection after injuring his right hamstring in the innings defeat of Zimbabwe in last month's one-off test, England again has had to shuffle a fast-bowler unit missing injured pair Mark Wood (knee) and Jofra Archer (thumb) and permanently deprived of now-retired stalwarts James Anderson and Stuart Broad.
