1. Avocation: noun; a hobby or minor occupation
2. Callous: adjective; showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others.
3. Capricious: adjective; given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior
4. Disparity: noun; a great difference
5. Efficacy: noun; the ability to produce a desired or intended result
6. Epistle: noun; a letter
7. Hospice: noun; a home providing care of the sick, especially the terminally ill
8. Impetus: noun; the force or energy with which a body moves
9. Moribund: adjective; a person on the verge of death
10. Vacillate: verb; alternate or waver between different opinions or actions; indecisive
My aunt never gets tired of insisting on how she has the worst job in the world. Even though medicine has always been her passion, she finds hospices extremely depressing, so she regularly thinks of quitting. When she started working there, it was merely an avocation, but it eventually turned into a full-time job. She tells me that at first it felt rewarding to be able to make a difference in someone’s life, as short as that life might be. She tries to describe the warmth that used to spread through her chest when she realized that she helped someone depart this world in peace. However, because of the various deaths she constantly witnesses, she has become seriously depressed, and no longer feels that her efforts are efficacious. In the epistles she sends me every week, she says that because of the melancholic and grim atmosphere that pervades in the hospice, even she feels callous, for she no longer has any positive energy or impetus left in her.
Because I constantly speak to her, I can easily identify the disparity between how she used to behave and how she behaves now, and it worries me deeply. Since she never feels positive, she is very prone to capricious behavior, and drives my family insane with her constant mood swings. Because I really wish I could help her, I constantly vacillate with the idea of driving down to New Mexico to keep her company, but I never do it because I am afraid of interacting with her moribund patients. I guess that I simply do not feel comfortable with being exposed to that level of suffering just yet.
2. Callous: adjective; showing or having an insensitive and cruel disregard for others.
3. Capricious: adjective; given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior
4. Disparity: noun; a great difference
5. Efficacy: noun; the ability to produce a desired or intended result
6. Epistle: noun; a letter
7. Hospice: noun; a home providing care of the sick, especially the terminally ill
8. Impetus: noun; the force or energy with which a body moves
9. Moribund: adjective; a person on the verge of death
10. Vacillate: verb; alternate or waver between different opinions or actions; indecisive
My aunt never gets tired of insisting on how she has the worst job in the world. Even though medicine has always been her passion, she finds hospices extremely depressing, so she regularly thinks of quitting. When she started working there, it was merely an avocation, but it eventually turned into a full-time job. She tells me that at first it felt rewarding to be able to make a difference in someone’s life, as short as that life might be. She tries to describe the warmth that used to spread through her chest when she realized that she helped someone depart this world in peace. However, because of the various deaths she constantly witnesses, she has become seriously depressed, and no longer feels that her efforts are efficacious. In the epistles she sends me every week, she says that because of the melancholic and grim atmosphere that pervades in the hospice, even she feels callous, for she no longer has any positive energy or impetus left in her.
Because I constantly speak to her, I can easily identify the disparity between how she used to behave and how she behaves now, and it worries me deeply. Since she never feels positive, she is very prone to capricious behavior, and drives my family insane with her constant mood swings. Because I really wish I could help her, I constantly vacillate with the idea of driving down to New Mexico to keep her company, but I never do it because I am afraid of interacting with her moribund patients. I guess that I simply do not feel comfortable with being exposed to that level of suffering just yet.
