They're up playing, they're playing Nintendo. And I don't think I ever could, seeing what these kids go through. She recalled the story of a teen-age girl undergoing chemotherapy who wiped her hand across her face and pulled off her eyebrows and eye lashes. Me, I get a yucky haircut, I cry for weeks. That kind of fortitude is one of the reasons oncology nurses say their patients are extraordinary.
Cancer patients are really a very special, special little group.
I think because of what they're facing, everything means more to them. They see joy in a lot of things the average patient just doesn't. Inevitably, some lose that fight. Groshek's worst time as a nurse was a nine-month period in 1997. First, her husband died of a blood disease in the spring.