Meramec educates students on cancer prevention
By: CASSIE KIBENS
Production Manager
What started out as just a lump on his throat, turned into four months of Chemo and three months of radiation. His junior year was disrupted and family was worried, but through it all, he found a new passion.
Lan Trinh, nursing student at STLCC-Meramec, was diagnosed with Hotchkins Lymphoma at 17. Trinh is in his last semester of nursing school and will graduate in December.
“[The Doctor] said it was just a couple rounds of chemo and radiation and you’re done. It kind of disrupted my junior year. I couldn’t run track that year,” Trinh said. “I was in orchestra but I couldn’t continue because they put a port in me, which allowed easier access for chemo and situate in such that the violin would have rested right there so I couldn’t maneuver it, so I had to stop.”
Trinh’s family, friends and teachers supported him. They knew to not push him too far the day of and the day after treatments. According to Trinh, people need to be mindful of cancer, especially if there is a family history of it.
“Some [cancers] you can’t really screen until it gets too late. Be more vigilante with your yearly checkups with your doctor, don’t wait like five years before something is wrong,” Trinh said. “If anything is wrong, don’t just blow it off.”
According to the American Cancer Society, in 2012 men had a one-in-two chance of developing some type of cancer and women had a one-in-three chance. STLCC-Meramec has been dedicating a day to the disease for about ten years now.
Meramec has been hosting Cancer Awareness Day for over 10 years now. For the past few years Debbie Corson, Service Learning Coordinator, and Stephanie Franks, professor of nursing, have planned the event, which took place Oct. 9.
“As an RN I did health teaching with patients and their families for years, and I’ve been an RN now for 25 years,” Franks said. “I always liked the teaching aspect of it because it empowers people to take care of their own health.”
Franks’ Nursing of Adults and Children II class has been participating for the last three years by creating handouts and posters in order to educate their peers about the various types of cancer. These nursing students are in their second year and will graduate in May 2014.
“Having the nurses involved has really made a difference; students definitely go and talk to the nurses and really learn a lot,” Corson said. “Of course this is great for [students] to talk to their peers about cancer prevention because if you hear the message from your peers it makes it a lot more impacted on your life.”
Franks has been teaching at Meramec for 14 years and said she enjoys the community aspect of the Cancer Awareness Day event.
“Before I taught I was a home health nurse and I felt teaching and prevention, working in the community, is very important.” Franks said. “Why treat an illness if we can prevent it from happening, as opposed to treating it after it’s occurred?”
Corson said she wanted to become part of Cancer Awareness Day because she likes to see a variety of service learning options for students and faculty.
“It just fits with service learning, and it fits with our campus,” Corson said. “The nurses are doing their clinical so they’re doing a service learning project, and we like to try to provide opportunities for different faculty members to offer service learning and this is just one of them.”
As a nursing student, events like Cancer Awareness Day, help Trinh and his classmates explore their career fields and areas of specialization, too.
“[Nursing] really stuck to me. I really want to end up working with kids in cancer, just because I was there and I can relate to the kids and the parents,” Trinh said. “So that’s my purpose for becoming a nurse. I’m hoping that because I was there, that kind of eases the anxiety, the stress the frustration of the whole family.”
Trinh’s experience with the children he met in the hospital gave him an eye-opening look on life. He found a new respect for kids and their strength.
“You think kids with cancer is pretty morbid subject. I was kind of shocked how all these kids who had, I found out, had terminal cancers, and were going to die soon were just having the times of their lives, like playing games and doing what not,” Trinh said. “It really made me appreciate how tough kids are, because now for adults, we find out we have terminal cancer, we sit there and we just wither away in our beds and wait for the time to come. It’s just making the most of what’s left.”
