“Hey, Sarah? What Do You Want To Do When You Grow Up?”.

With my older sisters away at college, the responsibility of caring for my ailing mother, suddenly fell to me, and my once picturesque childhood was at an end. I spent the early part of my adolescence learning how to run a household and play nurse to my mother. In addition to school and keeping the house in order, I administered her medications, gave injections, learned to catheterize her, helped her bath and use the restroom, and did all of the physician prescribed exercises to help with her leg cramps and numbness. When I had time I studied her disease, determined to find anything that might help alleviate her symptoms and bring the mom I remembered and craved back to me. And though she was often too far gone within her own mind to realize what was going on around her, when she was fully lucid she would smile softly and tell me what a wonderful nurse I would be when I grew up, just like she had been before the disease struck her. Looking back, I wish I could say that I preformed my duties with a smile on my face, but unfortunately that’s simply not

When I was a sophomore my mother was diagnosed with cancer and as a result, I have spent most of my college career dealing emotional with the result. She is free of disease as of right now but it was a long and tumultuous journey to get there. I practically spent 2 years without a mother because she was so sick and I had to take her role. I organized family events, cooked them meals when I could, did their shopping all while going to school three hours away and having constant fear that my mother and the love of my life was going to die. That is only my personal struggle with it, not even taking into account her trauma or my fathers or brothers. It almost seems selfish to reflect on this because it was nothing compared to what she was going through. I went through stages where I was horrified and so scared and then I was angry and selfish. I wanted my mother back, I wanted her to make me dinner when I came home from college and send me care packages again. I wanted her to go shopping every weekend like she used to and spend money on things that weren’t hospital bills. I wanted to call her and hear something other than how she couldn’t get chemotherapy that week because she was so weak and was rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion. I was tired of talking to people about it and people asking if I was okay. I felt like a broken record, “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, school is

Ever since I was a little girl, I have been interested in the field of medicine. Specifically, I want to be a Physician Assistant and work in a Pediatric Hospital. My Mother is a huge influence on my choice to pursue this career. She was a Firefighter and a Paramedic but recently decided to go back to college for a Bachelors in Psychology to become a Physical Therapist. An area of specialization in medicine that interests me is Emergency Pediatric Care. This area interests me because I love children and want to be able to help kids who have been ill or injured. When I was younger, I went to the hospital with my younger cousin Kylie. She suffers from cerebral palsy and I remember watching the doctors taking care and making sure Kylie was comfortable

Andy was embarking on his second semester of his junior year in college. After a long bout with a cold and the sudden emergence of a protruding mass on his chest, he knew something was not right. Within a week, he received devastating news - a diagnosis of an aggressive form of bone cancer. The treatment regiment included two years of chemotherapy and radiation. The extensiveness of his cancer made surgical treatment impossible. After just his first dose of chemotherapy, he became septic and spent six weeks in an intensive care unit followed by weeks of rehabilitation. Although he had been optimistic about continuing to attend classes and staying involved with campus organizations throughout the treatment course, a disabled immune system and countless days in the hospital prevented this. His friends and peers became distant because his appearance and prognosis made them uncomfortable and speechless. He eventually relied on his mother and closest friends to take him to appointments because of increasing weakness and chronic pain. When his world was virtually turned upside down and he eventually lost much of his independence, Andy started to display symptoms of major depressive disorder.

Growing up, I have had to endure the loss of many family members to the devastating disease we all know as cancer. My family history varies from the different types of the illness from lung cancer, leukemia, breast cancer, ovarian, and so on. My mother and grandmothers on my mother's and father's sides suffered from ovarian, leukemia, and breast cancer respectively. I have seen the horrible effects it has on the victim and their families, and knowing that pain and grief personally, makes me believe that I would be a great nurse in oncology. I want to help those going through what could be some of the toughest times in their lives if not the toughest.

This diverse clinical settings enhanced my clinical skills beyond my expectations. The motivation to perfect my medical knowledge and skills in order to serve my future patients has been by daily inspiration. However the repetitive gratitude expressed by patients and their families and the positive feedback I received from my attendings emphasizing my ability to connect with patients especially in challenging settings,and the satisfaction I get from just making a suffering patient feels a little better, made me certain that I not only have what it takes to become a successful Oncologist but I have the personal qualities and skills that would allow me to really enjoy my

As a young child, my mother was diagnosed with leukemia; she was hospitalized for an extended period of time, nearly touching death after receiving a stem cell transplant. Not only did this experience make me an anxious child, it also forced me to deal with circumstances beyond my control as a five-year-old. At five years old, I began to see a counselor to help develop healthy coping strategies

When I first began my college career in 2011, I was a first generation college student. I entered into college with only a vague goal of becoming a Physician’s Assistant. The most common question I was asked was why? Why a Physicians Assistant? And I my answer was always the simple standard answer of: “I want to help people”. I, undeniably, still want to help others but it was not until the Christmas of my sophomore year, that I truly understood what it meant and took to be a successful Physician’s Assistant. A few days after Christmas my mother was hospitalized for two and a half weeks with a continuous blood clot in her leg and a small blood clot in her lungs. She spent the first 3 days in ICU, required multiple blood and iron transfusions, and eventually surgery. For me, the worst part of the entire experience was being awakened in the middle of the night by nothing more than the faint whisper of my name. Till this day, I don’t know how I heard it. My mom had collapsed on the stairs in excruciating pain. She was extremely weak and unable to move. I thought I was watching my mother die, and the immediate fear and panic that I felt, still haunts me sometimes. I didn’t know what to do or what was

During her career as a pediatric nurse, she became very connected with a patient who happened to be her first death encounter. At the time, the patient was a six-year-old boy who was diagnosed with leukemia. ML said: "When I was caring for this patient, I was a mother myself. Seeing that boy and his family suffer gave me so much heartache… it was hard not to make it personal." The more she worked with this child, she observed the pain and suffering him and his family had to go through. She also learned about him and the family dynamics which enabled ML to help the patient and the family become well involved in understanding one another and guide care towards an agreement that everyone was satisfied with. As I reached for the tissue box to hand it to her, I rephrased the story to confirm the understanding of the story. She nodded and continued on talking about things she has done for the patient. Being a mother and a nurse, she believed in providing this child with what a healthy boy would be doing at his age. ML's strategies involved promoting short physical activities, playing games, and encouraging the parents to participate in such activities if possible; ML wanted to provide a lighter atmosphere around the unit and help the patient disregard the diagnosis even if it was just for a little while. Over the past few months, she continued to assist this patient as his

This past summer, I, along with my mother and father, travelled to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. My mom had been invited to participate in the St. Jude For Life Study because when she was around six to eight years old, she had a form of leukemia called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. This particular study is to help all present and future St. Jude patients and help to research for a cure. While there, I saw first-hand how cancer can affect a family. You can just see all of the stress, the worry, the exhaustion, the tiredness, the fear, and the tears on the families’ and the patients’ faces.

Hospitals are not the best places; no one wants to stay, but one was my favorite place for six months. People think of hospitals as some place to sit and wait for bad news. Brunswick hospital is the hospital I visited every day. It had plain white walls, red seats to sit in while waiting, and had a great staff. I was in sixth grade living life as any normal eleven year old. Life was a breeze. Then on February twenty-sixth, my whole world changed. My mother found out she had stage three Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. “Mom was going to die,” was the only thing running though my little scatter brain. She would not see my graduate or follow my dreams.

At that point all I would ever hear from people was, “oh you poor thing”, or “I’m sorry!” The only thing I heard was people pitying me, but in contrary, those words and moments only sparked a strength that I never thought was achievable. I promised myself to turn those words that represented sorrow into drive to fuel that strength. The first memory that I realized that inner strength was when I was first told that I had cancer. I heard the door click open, five doctors appeared in their white coats, they would come in surrounding me at the hospital bed. I just laid there confused about why all of this was happening. None of them spoke for a minute. My guess is that they were trying to figure out how to tell a fourteen-year-old that she has cancer as if they expected me to start breaking down sobbing. Instead, my eyes refused to shed a single tear as just hearing the words, “ You have cancer.” Those three words turned my life upside down in a matter of a second. Then I proceeded to process them in my mind. Trying to calculate a solution as if it were a math problem. As if it was that easy, but I still managed to ask the question that I never

My grandmother is a second mother to me as my parents were busy working to support our family. She has raised me to become the person I am today. I just started college when I learned that my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through a major surgery removing more than half of her right breast. I independently researched and studied medical vocabulary, so as to understand what the surgeons, PAs and nurses were communicating when caring for her. Recovering from surgery was difficult for my grandmother, and during this time, I encountered various medical staff trying their best to help. They often came to me and explained how her condition was to keep me and my family informed. At this moment, I began to grow my passion toward medical profession. I wanted to care for others like they had cared for my family. Thanks to these medical professionals, to this day my grandmother is healthy and cancer-free.

I participate in the Teen Life Council at St. Louis Children’s hospital. The mission of the Teen Life Council is to make St. Louis Children’s Hospital a better place for teen patients by advising the hospital staff on issues important to teens, working to improve the activities available to teen patients, and planning events that will make the hospital a more enjoyable place for teens during their stay. I got involved in the teen life council about two years ago when, my tennis coach who often volunteers at the hospital recommended me for this council. At age seven I was diagnosed with stage three Lymphoma cancer and was treated at Children’s hospital. Now I have been in remission for nine years and thought my previous experience as a patient

In September of my junior year of high school, my mom told me for the third time that she had cancer. She had spent the entire summer coughing. It was a bad summer cold or maybe a stubborn case of bronchitis. No one could seem to figure out what was causing the cough. A late summer bronchoscopy finally solved the case. It was cancer. Calmly, she reassured me on that September day, “It’s an early stage cancer. They say it’s very treatable. We’ve been down this road before.” The next nine months was a road that no one in my family had traveled. Frequent doctor visits, chemotherapy treatments, and hospitalizations became our new normal. We painstakingly watched as each round of chemo treatments devastated and weakened her. Through everything, my mom was resilient, tough, and determined to live.