A SPECIAL GROUP OF CAREGIVERS INSPIRES YOUNG CANCER SURVIVOR TO PURSUE HER DREAM CAREER After the storm, the sun will shine again. Rays of light are finally beginning to shine on cancer survivor Kate Hardaway’s path. The 17-yearold has taken recent trials and allowed them to become her inspiration and motivation. She has much to celebrate including beating cancer, graduating high school one year early and recently being accepted into Abilene Christian University where she will pursue her newfound dream of becoming a certified child life specialist (CLS). Many people have never heard of this job, but it is one Kate and other childhood cancer survivors know well. “My child life specialists were a big motivator throughout my treatment,” Hardaway said. The CLS team at Methodist Children’s Hospital has been with Hardaway during her one-anda-half-year journey with stage four Hodgkin lymphoma.“ They helped explain all of my surgeries, and they even showed me a port and let me access it before it was put in. They made sure I always had something fun to do during my hospital stays,” she recalled. “I want to be able to help kids going through treatment like me, and now I feel like I have a unique perspective.” Hardaway’s strength and compassion for others radiate during each conversation with her. But she has not had an easy road to follow. Her diagnosis put a pause on many life events to which teenagers look forward. Her first hospitalization prevented her from being able
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to attend her high school’s homecoming dance, prompting her care team to organize a surprise homecoming in the hospital. Just when she thought she was cancer-free and about to earn her driver’s license, cancer put a pause on another exciting moment. “I started getting [symptoms] again in May [2020] and they did scans and my cancer had come back. The treatment plan was to do two or three rounds of chemotherapy and then a stem cell transplant,” Hardaway said. The transplant left her with little energy and extreme sickness. The weeks-long hospital stays during a pandemic felt isolating at
