Her Son’s Strength in Battling Cancer Has Helped Her Persevere

 

As she talked with BusinessWest on a Tuesday morning late last month, Kristen Racine-Melendez was on the road, heading to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

She had her GPS on because she was taking a different route this time, hoping to cut the travel time by a few minutes. She knows the regular route by heart, having made it dozens of times since her son, Chase, was diagnosed with leukemia on Aug. 12 last year.

That’s a date, and a discussion, that Racine-Melendez won’t ever forget. And it came just a few weeks before she was due to start her second year in the nursing program at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). She thought about putting her studies on hold and devoting all of her time, energy, and emotion to Chase, but with some words of encouragement from her husband, Carlos Melendez, she decided to press on.

“Once we got of the ICU and started to get more answers about what was going on with Chase, my husband and I sat down and talked about it,” she recalled. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I should take this year off.’ And he told me, ‘no … you need to stay in now, more than ever. This is for our son now.’”

It goes without saying that her second year of nursing school — a challenge under any circumstances — become exponentially more difficult as she confronted a situation that no parent wants to face.

“Once we got of the ICU and started to get more answers about what was going on with Chase, my husband and I sat down and talked about it. I said, ‘I don’t know if I should take this year off.’ And he told me, ‘no … you need to stay in now, more than ever. This is for our son now.”

But she persevered, graduated in May, and is preparing to start work in the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center, a setting she knows well because she spent seven years as a tech there before deciding to fulfill a long-held dream and follow her grandmother and aunt into the nursing field.

She told BusinessWest that she was able to make it to the commencement ceremonies because of the support she received from Carlos, but also from faculty and other students at STCC. But mostly, she persevered because of the inspiration provided by Chase as he battled leukemia with strength that astounded all those involved in his care and treatment.

“He amazes me every single day,” she said. “He always has a smile on his face; he’ll throw up one second, and the next second, he’ll say, ‘mom, I want to do this, I want to eat this.’ He gives me my strength.”

And while the past 10 months have been extraordinarily difficult, they have also provided learning experiences on many different levels, said Racine-Melendez, adding that these have made her stronger and, by her calculations, better able to handle all that will confront her as an emergency-room nurse.

Flashing back to last summer, Racine-Melendez said Chase, 4 at the time, started experiencing some problems. She eventually took him the ER, where a series of tests were undertaken to determine just what was wrong.

“They told me his bone narrow wasn’t working properly, and right from there I knew, and my heart just sank,” she recalled. ‘It was a very unexpected outcome; I didn’t really expect them to come out and say he had cancer.”

Chase’s diagnosis and subsequent treatment added several layers of challenge to her plans to enter the nursing field, the latest chapter in a career that saw her go from a seven-year stint with the National Guard to an equally lengthy run as a tech at Mercy.

Looking back on this past year, she said she powered through, caring not only for Chase but his twin sister, Kira, and persevered with the support of many others, starting with her husband. But the faculty and fellow students were also very supportive, she said.

“I decided to stay in and give it a try, and we made it work,” she said, adding that, following classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, she would travel to Boston Children’s Hospital, where Chase was admitted for two months, to relieve Carlos, who was with him the other days of the week.

“I feel like I was just in survival mode; I had my moments where I was knocked down, but I’d just get up and keep going,” she said of her last two semesters at STCC. “I got through it … somehow.”

She said Chase, who is in remission and receives evaluations and treatment at Dana-Farber three Tuesdays a month, is doing well.

“This week was a really good week,” she said. “His numbers were up; he was able to run and around and be a kid. It was nice to see him actually enjoy a little bit of childhood.”

As for Racine-Melendez, she said she’s doing well, too, looking forward to starting at Mercy, and also looking forward to putting the learning experiences of the past two years — all of them — to work.

“I feel like I was just in survival mode; I had my moments where I was knocked down, but I’d just get up and keep going.”

Indeed, she said caring for Chase gave her experience that went beyond what she encountered in the classroom and even her clinical rotations. Meanwhile, she learned first-hand what it’s like to be a parent getting devastating news about a child’s cancer diagnosis — and then experienced everything that comes after that diagnosis.

“I think this will help me; I can empathize with my patients and understand the aspect of the other side — what the parents are going through,” she explained. “I definitely would have preferred not to go through this, but I believe that everything happens for a reason. Everything I’m going through is just making me a stronger mother, a stronger person, and a stronger nurse.”