Training to be a nurse.. with the nurse who helped save my life
Cancer survivor inspired by staff who treated her
A WOMAN who beat a rare cancer aged four is training under the nurse who helped save her life and inspired her to join the profession.
Clara Markiewicz, now 20, vowed to follow in the footsteps of her favourite nurse Kate Pye after enduring four rounds of chemotherapy plus surgery. But she was stunned to be reunited with her 16 years later, at the children’s hospital where she recently began a student nurse work placement. Clara said: “I was trying to look at her name badge without falling off my seat or being noticed because I thought I recognised her.
SCARY
“She then caught my eye and said, ‘I know you’. We swapped old photos. It was really good to see her.”
Kate, 46, said: “She’d been through so much. She’s moved around and I’ve done the same, so it’s amazing to meet again. I’m sure she’ll be a brilliant nurse.”
Clara, of High Barnet, Herts, spent six months at Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, East London, with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2001. She said: “It was sad and a scary place sometimes but the nurses made it fun.”
A clinical trial helped save her life. Clara is in the first year of a children’s nursing degree, with a stint at Southampton Children’s Hospital where Kate is head of nursing. She added: “I could say to a child, ‘I understand’ and mean it as I’ve been through it.”