Has your life changed in the past three minutes? Every three minutes a child somewhere in the world is diagnosed with cancer. Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease for children under nineteen years old. I want to help make cancer be the smallest cause of death. By working as a pediatric oncology nurse I can help make a difference. With an abundance of personal experience with cancer, my desire to know more and my passion for helping children I will accomplish my goal.

I have known a lot of people who have had cancer. From great-grandparents to grandparents, to aunts and uncles and family friends, there has not been one part of my life that has not been affected by cancer. My greatest loss was my grandma though. She passed away right before I turned two. Yes, I know I can’t remember her that well, but I still want to keep her memory alive. I was told that when my grandma was alive, family gatherings were amazing and that she made everything better. Christmas was the last holiday that she got to celebrate. She almost wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital, but the hospice care system made it possible for her to go home for Christmas. Through the loss of my grandma, I have learned to be compassionate towards others who are going through what my family and I have gone through. This loss and others have inspired me to want to learn more about cancer.

My personal experiences have made me want to learn more about cancer from a medical perspective. My goal is to learn more about developing cures through treatments for different types of cancer. I have heard that cancer makes people feel constantly tired and it makes them weak. I want to study it and see what it does to the body, not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. I would like to know the side effects of the treatments and how to help make the healing process as smooth as possible for the patient. While testing different samples trying to find the cure for cancer is important, I would like my main focus to be working with children during their treatments.

When my family gets letters in the mail from St. Jude's Hospital, I have always been drawn to read the biography about the child pictured at the top of the letter. Seeing the picture of a child who literally has to fight to live, makes me want to take action and help them. The children are just beginning their lives, they should have so much time left. If I can be a part of making a child’s life longer, I will definitely to do that. I would strive to have a one on one relationship with each child that I work with so I can make them as comfortable as possible during their treatments.

Imagine the thoughts going through a young child’s brain when they are diagnosed with cancer. “Who are these strangers?” “Where am I?” “What is wrong?” While I can’t take away these thoughts, I would like to be able to provide them with some sort of relief during their treatments. I think that because of my experience with cancer, my overall curiosity about the disease and my love of helping children will help me be a pediatric oncology nurse. In my lifetime, I would like the number of children diagnosed with cancer to decrease substantially. In the amount of time that it took you to read this essay, another family has been told these awful words… “I’m sorry, your child has been diagnosed with cancer.” Tick, tick, tick.