The first symptom was nothing more than a fever.
The doctor chalked it up to a virus and sent 11-year-old Faith Welker home. Two days later, when Kathleen Welker went to wake her daughter for school, she found Faith lying on her back and noticed with a shock that the child’s stomach was swollen far beyond its normal size.

Tests revealed that Faith had Burkitt’s lymphoma, a rare, fast-growing type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that affects mainly children. The tumor in Faith’s abdomen had grown large enough to break blood vessels, and internal bleeding had caused the distended abdomen.

Under the care of Martin Brecher, MD, Chair of Pediatric Oncology, and other members of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) medical team, Faith underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy, which led to remission. “They told me that if I stayed in remission for two years, without any relapse, they would consider me cured,” she recalls. “That type of cancer is aggressive, so they treated it aggressively and were able to get rid of it.”

Faith’s experience as a cancer patient at RPCI inspired her to think about working in the medical field, but “I never had the self-confidence to attempt it,” she says. After high school, she attended Jamestown Community College and later earned a B.A. in psychology, with highest honors, from Buffalo State College. Still, the urge to become a nurse kept coming back to her, and the balance tipped when a friend of her mother’s remarked that she always thought Faith would be an outstanding nurse. With that vote of confidence and her mother’s encouragement, Faith enrolled in the nursing program at Jamestown Community College, graduating in May 2008. Twelve days later, she started working in the Blood and Marrow Transplantation unit.

As a survivor of childhood cancer, Faith receives specialized health monitoring through RPCI’s Long-Term Follow-Up Clinic, still watched over by Dr. Brecher 15 years after her diagnosis.

“I have told some of the patients that I’m a patient at RPCI, too,” Faith says. “I can see the situation from both ends. I know the nursing aspect, and I also know what it’s like to be a cancer patient—how hard it is for them and their families. I try to make them as comfortable as possible while they’re going through this.

“It was my dream to work at RPCI. When I was getting treatment, my nurses took such good care of me. I have always wanted to be the nurse they were to me.”

Originally published Fall 2008 in Roswellness Magazine.