On a Friday afternoon in July 2015, Kathleen Shannon Dorcy received a phone call from the SCCA clinic. A young woman, Jessica Mann, was visiting Seattle from New York on a business trip and touring the campus where her mother had a stem cell transplant two decades earlier for acute myeloid leukemia.
“When she said her mom’s name, it was the woman who had given me the little mouse,” recalled Kathleen, SCCA’s director of nursing research, education and practice.
Sally Mann came to Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with her family in 1993 for a transplant and then, when her disease relapsed, the possibility of participating in an early-phase clinical trial led by Fred Appelbaum, MD. When the trial was put on hold for analysis before Sally could enroll, the Manns decided to return to their home in California for treatment.
But first they gave Kathleen a small ceramic figurine — a mouse, chosen as a tribute to Dr. Appelbaum’s mouse-derived study. “They gave it to me and said, ‘We want you to continue … finding hope for patients with leukemia, and we want this little mouse to be there as a reminder of us and this journey.’”
For the next 22 years, Kathleen moved the little mouse each time she changed offices, drawing from it the inspiration the Manns had intended. Suddenly, with the phone call in 2015, she had a chance to pass that inspiration on to Jessica. She grabbed the figurine and went to greet her unexpected visitor.
As the two women talked about Sally, who passed away in 1995, Kathleen offered Jessica the mouse to take home to New York, where it could inspire her in all that she did, and Jessica accepted. The mouse’s journey wasn’t over, however. Two years later, Kathleen returned from a conference to find a large envelope on her desk and, inside, the mouse along with a note from Jessica.
She wanted the mouse to stay at SCCA, where it might continue to inspire the nurses and all the clinical staff who work to relieve suffering and save lives, and to remind us that even when a patient doesn’t survive their disease, we have touched them and their families on a deep level and are part of a significant and sacred experience.
As an oncology provider, you know very well that cancer care is about more than just administering treatments to patients. It’s about connecting with and caring for the whole person as well as the circle of family and friends who surround them, just as Kathleen has connected with the Manns across a quarter century.
To share and celebrate the inspiration and hope embodied by Kathleen’s mouse, we created a replica for each of our nurses, whose dedication inspires all of us at SCCA every day.
