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Pediatric Graduates

To the cacophonous ovation of family, friends, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering clinical and support staff, 15 young men and women entered the Pediatric Day Hospital's Recreation Center on June 13 to take their places for the Department's first annual Convocation. They were representatives of a total of 42 Memorial Sloan-Kettering patients or former patients who had earned their high school or high school equivalency diplomas this spring despite the challenge of having been treated for cancer. Indeed several -- as evidenced by IV poles and masks -- were still in active treatment.

Welcoming graduates and guests, Pediatrics Administrator Nina J. Pickett explained that it was when she and her staff were putting the final touches on plans for the Department's annual Pediatric Prom that they learned of the extraordinarily high number of patients and former patients who would be graduating from their respective high schools in 2007. With the realization -- and within a matter of weeks -- the first annual Convocation was born.

"We thank you and your families for allowing us to share in this milestone in your lives," Ms. Pickett said. "We are humbled by your fortitude, awed by the power of your determination, and inspired by your successes."

“My life has come full circle as I stand for another graduation, another rare moment when life's sinusoidal waves -- the troughs of despair rising to the crests of elation -- stand still and pause for our silent reflection.”
-- Megan Popkin

Megan Popkin, diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma in eighth grade, delivered the graduate address. Ms. Popkin, who entered Harvard University in the fall of 2007, recalled attending her middle school graduation four years ago and listening to her twin sister deliver the valedictory speech, "a forceful testament to overcoming life's suffering by greeting each sorrow as a challenge and an opportunity -- even such a challenge as a twin sister's battle with cancer." Now, after treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Ms. Popkin said, "My life has come full circle as I stand for another graduation, another rare moment when life's sinusoidal waves -- the troughs of despair rising to the crests of elation -- stand still and pause for our silent reflection." Ms. Popkin noted that she was "thankful to have spent the hardest time of my life at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. The doctors, nurses, technicians, interns, social workers, and patients have done much more than free me from the bonds of sickness so that I could live my life again. . . . My cancer taught me what real fear was -- real pain and real suffering -- but the people at Memorial Sloan-Kettering revealed to me the meaning of real compassion and real strength, along with the awe-inspiring power of our common humanity."

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2007 Pediatric Convocation
Watch the 2007 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Pediatric Convocation.
Runtime: 41 minutes.

Richard J. O'Reilly, Chair of the Department of Pediatrics, delivering the keynote address, reminded the students that "you have faced down your dragons and taken your lives to a new dimension, exemplified by the fact that you're graduating from high school," and said he saw before him "those who teach us how to get on with life [and] have a capacity to deal with life in ways that most of us never attain."

Vice Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics Paul A. Meyers presented each graduate with a special Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center certificate of achievement. Joining him were Mary Maher, principal of hospital schools for the New York City Department of Education, and Mary Ellen Fitzsimons, high school teacher for P.S. 401M, Memorial Sloan-Kettering's hospital school, who presented the students with Department of Education awards. (Support for Memorial Sloan-Kettering's school -- one of 40 in a city-wide program called Hospital Schools - is provided in part by the Associates Committee of The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.)

Memorial Hospital Physician-in-Chief Robert E. Wittes concluded the celebration by telling the graduates that "what you've learned at a very early stage in your lives is that you can do anything you want. You've learned that in one of the hardest ways possible, but you've learned it. The sky's the limit."


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