E8
SALUTE TO NURSES
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021
Medical setback fuels passion for nursing
one day.
‘There’s something wrong with her,’” Nicole Jarocha re- called. Madison, who lost about 20 pounds over two months and felt se- riously fatigued, had seen doctors for a few months, but nothing came of the appoint- ments. Her mother pushed for bloodwork and other tests, and Madison ended up getting admitted to Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pennsylvania. “I had to stop ev- erything,” Madison recalled. “l can’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.” Madison learned she has acute system- ic scleroderma. The more common vari- ety causes the skin to produce too much col- lagen, but in Madison’s case, her body produc- es too much collagen internally, which the body thinks of as for- eign and then starts attacking her muscles, tissues and organs. Overall, the disease led to at least 10 hos- pitalizations, several surgeries and proce- dures, numerous trips to Baltimore and the possibility of needing a double lung transplant
ing it. Subsequent testing showed she was clear of cancer and did not need chemothera- py. She said she feels a lot better with the can- cer behind her. “I got really lucky,” Madison said.
can do with nursing after school and ev- erything,” Madison said. Early in col- lege, while raising money for the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children through the Knight-Thon, she col- lapsed and was taken to that very hospital for treatment. She went blind for more than a month, her mother said, as doctors sug- gested that flareups from Madison’s disor- der could have affected the connective tissues in the eyes. While Madison regained her eyesight, she is legal- ly blind without her glasses. Then last year, Madison was riding on the back of a moped with a friend when the vehicle crashed into a pole at 55 mph. Thrown more than 20 feet but miraculously alive, Madison had
bones in her foot. Still, she pushed forward through her recovery, and then an- other setback came: cancer. In June, she noticed a lump on top of her rib cage but thought it was just a cyst, which she gets often. By October, however, she realized it had almost doubled or tripled in size. Doctors diagnosed her with leiomyosarcoma, a can- cer of the
By CAITLIN HEANEY WEST The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.)
“The nurses that I had, I feel like I def- initely would not be where I was without them,” Madison said. “I kind of want to do for other people what they did with me.” Switching paths Madison realized go- ing into her senior year at Abington Heights that nursing was the career for her. Ready for a fresh start, she headed to Florida and plans to graduate this May with a nursing degree. She’s had re- search published, made dean’s list each semes- ter and was picked to participate in a re- search study. Madison expects to stay in Florida for another year after col- lege before hitting the road to work as a travel nurse. She’s con- sidering a career in bone-marrow trans- plants or oncology, having done clinical work in an adult on- cology clinic last year that showed her how much she enjoys caring for patients in a criti- cal setting. Eventually, she’d like to move into nurse education. “There’s a lot you
Madison Jarocha knows her life would look much different if illness had not touched her. From an autoim- mune disease that shook up her world as a teenager to broken bones to a cancer diag- nosis in her final year of college, the 21-year- old has faced — and survived — more than some people do in a life- time. Madison, of South Abington Township, Pennsylvania, is study- ing for a nursing degree from University of Central Florida. As a student in Abington Heights School District, however, Madison thought she’d one day study math- ematics. That, along with much more of her life, changed when she was 16. A basketball and field hockey play- er, Madison initially thought she was hav- ing issues with asthma when she started get- ting out of breath and passing out at prac- tice. When her mother, Nicole Jarocha, saw Madison for the first time in a few weeks, her intuition kicked in. “She walked into the house, (and) I turned to my sister and said,
Showing strength
Both Madison and her mother see how
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connective tissues and muscles. Madison underwent surgery on Nov. 30, dur- ing which doctors re- moved the affected area and tissue surround-
a concus- sion and broke sev- er- al
Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels
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