The Final Chapter

Julia was a six-year-old girl with stage IV neuroblastoma for which she had received two years of aggressive multimodal therapy. She lived in a small town about three hours away from the children's hospital where she was treated. Her parents were both teachers and she had two younger sisters, Jessica, 4, and Jemima, 3. Julia's parents alternated taking leave from work and staying with her in the hospital. While one parent was with her, the other parent would go home to work and care for her sisters with the support of their extended family and community, particularly people from their church and the school where they both taught. Julia was one of my first primary patients as a new pediatric oncology nurse.