New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
‘I said I am going to celebrate no matter what’
COVID-19, cancer can’t stop SCSU grad
NEW HAVEN — Nancy Green has seen past a lot of obstacles in her life.
Green, 56, graduated with a degree in sociology from Southern Connecticut State University in a commencement ceremony she held herself. When the originally scheduled commencement ceremony slated for Friday was postponed because of the pandemic, Green said she paid it no mind.
“I said I am going to celebrate no matter what,” she said. “I am going to come up
with something to celebrate that this grandma is graduating.”
Although Green is a grandmother, she estimates the amount of assumed grandchildren she has on campus is about 100.
“I found out really quickly that I’m the queen grandmother, I guess,” she said.
Green said she would wait on campus for hours after her final class of the day ended sometimes just to deliver baked goods to students who had asked. She said it’s part of her nature to do whatever she can to help others and cheer them up.
Although Green remains optimistic — there’s always someone who has it worse, she says — her journey to graduation was not an easy one.
Before the spring semester began, doctors discovered tumors in her pancreas and esophagus. Her doctor told her to take three to four months off from school. She refused.
“I said, ‘You’re confused; I’m in my senior year and I am going to walk,’ ” she said.
Ultimately, she worked out an arrangement to complete school work from her hospital bed. Within five hours of surgery, Green said she was sitting up, doing work on her laptop.
After recovering in March, Green said it wasn’t long until she felt serious fatigue. She made three trips to the hospital, and only on the third time was she admitted.
“I went back and got to the door and was breathing so bad at the entrance I literally fell to my knees; I couldn’t breathe at all,” she said.
Green tested positive for COVID-19. She said that although she holds no ill will toward anyone and believes everyone was doing their best, the hospital system was completely overwhelmed.
“It feels like you’re at the bottom of the ocean and you’re so tired you don’t want to try anymore,” she said. At one point, she said she wanted to give up until she remembered her grandchildren.
Green said she repeated the motto she coined in her adolescence and has repeated ever since: “My eyes can see farther than they can look.”
She describes it as being in New
York City, looking out a window: Although there may be a building obstructing the naked eye, there is life and light beyond those walls, she said. It’s a philosophy she has stuck by for more than 40 years.
SCSU Medical Director Diane Morgenthaler, who interacted with Green during that time, said she knows Green to be extremely strong.
“My experience with her was she is an extremely courageous and strong individual,” Morgenthaler said. “She recently has gone through a number of situations of adversity, and she definitely persevered through the semester.”
Although Green made a recovery — she still takes seven medications for asthma and her lungs daily — she said she has lost a friend or family member nearly daily to the virus.
With her degree, Green wants to make a difference in the way emergency services are rendered to women escaping domestic violence. In her own experience escaping a marriage, Green said she was left high and dry by services.
“When you get that call you have to put a bag together — really it’s your papers and a garbage bag and you throw whatever you can in there. They cannot come to you, so you have to get to the train station. I was a two-hour walk from the train station,” she said. “With no money, you have to get to train station. The last time I did leave, you get there and the train left and the person says, ‘I’m sorry,’ so now you have to walk back home and walk into a big mess.”
As someone who has gone through the experience of leaving intimate partner violence, Green wants to get her master’s degree so she has the credentials to make serious and substantive change.
“If I can do this after everything I’ve been through, they can do it, too. I don’t mind putting myself out there. They need to see the very people like us. That’s where the change comes,” she said.