#DayWithoutTheNursesof5A
When you are 27 and diagnosed with cancer you aren’t the typical cancer patient. When you are 27 and diagnosed with an acute leukemia not being “normal” has its downsides. The facilities are designed for older patients so there’s no streaming Netflix all day and sometimes you can make the younger doctors a little uncomfortable because you are the same age. Talk about facing your own mortality.
But then there were the Nurses of 5A.
Today we are celebrating International Women’s Day. Why today? Because in 1908 a group of women went on strike to demand fair wages (yeah, we’ve been fighting for that for a while) and voting rights. This year you will see women wearing red or see the hashtag #daywithoutwomen all over your social feeds. You may even get a few out-of-office emails today from women who are on strike to remind all of us how important women are to the US economy.
Over at Critical Mass: The Young Adult Cancer Alliance I can’t go on strike because the House of Representatives is currently marking up the GOP bill to replace the Affordable Care Act, which could have a devastating impact on the adolescent and young adult cancer community. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking about all the women who worked tirelessly to ensure cancer wasn’t the end of my story.
My cancer treatment was in-patient. My husband and I had just bought our first house. We moved in on a cold February day and not even six weeks later I was moving out. My new full-time residence would be the fifth floor of the Weinberg Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
The Nurses of 5A helped make the space a home. They helped me decorate my room and recommended places my family and I could explore during the day. They were all my age, but never once did they look at me with fear or concern in their eyes. We were a team. We were a family. We were going to make it out of this together.
The Nurses of 5A treated not just the disease, but also my heart and my mind. We celebrated milestones and holidays together. They decorated my room for my 28th birthday and got us the best seats in the entire hospital to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over the Baltimore Inner Harbor.
They picked me up off the floor several times after blacking out when my blood pressure unexpectedly plummeted. They rubbed my legs during bone marrow biopsies and gave me tips on how to ask the surgeons to place my port. When my body was too tired to fight an infection, they gave me the strength to push through. I never knew that could have been the end of my story because they never left my side. They never gave up. They would never let me give up.
I couldn’t imagine a day without the Nurses of 5A.
