Battles against cancer inspire students to become nurses
By Leyre Quintana
Nursing student Rebecca Ferguson still remembers her fear when she knew her 4-year-old son, Matthew, had a malignant tumor under his arm.
Mother of two other young children, she couldn’t even think about losing one of them. If that happened, “there would be no way to go on,” she insists.
But the golf-ball sized lump that started everything in 2001 belongs to the past. Her son is cancer-free now.
“Matthew’s disease and the battle with it shaped every part of my life,” she says. “I am not the same person now that I was in 2001, and I will never be that person again.” Now, Ferguson cares about important things and ignores small issues that used to bother her. “This is what cancer does to people.”
Experiencing this disease can drive people into nursing, as it did Ferguson. Having had someone in their family battle cancer inspires them to choose this career and help future patients who face this disease. “I can’t wait to become an oncology nurse and be there for the families that are feeling what I was feeling,” she says.
Although sometimes she wonders what Matthew must have thought about everything, she is reminded of his bravery. “The other day he lost one of his front teeth, and I am so grateful that he has the opportunity to do so.”
She and her son will participate again this year in Relay for Life in celebration of his victory and in support of his grandmother, Kathy, who has breast cancer.
According to Rebecca, many “cancer moms” agree that there’s nothing like talking to another mother who has gone through treatment with her child. Nursing will bring her that opportunity to help. “I will have the knowledge and the skills to make those families comfortable,” she says, and “I will allow them to consider me part of their treatment family as I did with our nurses.”
That is also what nursing is all about for RVCC nursing student Robin McJury, a single mother of three. Her oldest daughter had cancer when she was four. Nurses and technicians had a big impact on her family. “Their kindness and attention help us get through,” she says. “I would like to play that role in someone else’s life.”
Pediatric cancer is hard on families, but the process is exhausting for all cancer patients. “When I learned I had cancer I was seven months pregnant,” says nursing student Lydia Lampert. “I have never been so scared in my life.”
Her struggle is the story of many cancer survivors who can understand first hand what other patients are battling. That was her incentive to quit her job in the business world and become a nurse to give back “what they gave so kindly to me when I needed it most.”
As a cancer survivor, “I have gone back to many of my nurses to say thank you, and even the ones I never did get to thank know in their hearts that I am forever grateful for their compassion,” she says.
“They all inspired me to become one of them.”
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