Breanne Anderson and Lake EMS EMT Christopher Didier, both former cancer patients and current employees at Arnold Palmer Children’s hospital reflect on the care they received that kept them alive and motivated them to return to give back as adults.
The Arnold Palmer Medical Center has been around long enough that children who were patients there decades ago are now as old as the nurses who cared for them at the time. Celebrating its 25th anniversary on Wednesday, Arnold Palmer has treated more than 145,000 children, some of whom chose careers in health care when they grew up. “I told Dr. [Vincent] Guisti at 13 that I would be back some day and be working here,” said Breanne Anderson, 35.
To Christopher Didier, being around the oncology staff and other children with cancer at Arnold Palmer was — aside from the needles and chemotherapy — some of the happiest times of his childhood. There were games and ice cream and pizza and getting your bald head painted. “Cancer is a bad thing. It hurts, it’s stressful, emotional,” said Didier, 32. “But it seems like when I wasn’t in the hospital, I wasn’t having a good time.”
That experience as a child convinced Didier to choose a career in health care. “I wanted to give something back for the experience I had as a kid,” said Didier, who works as a Lake EMS emergency medical technician and an on-call EMT for Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies.
Read the complete article at Orlando Sentinel.