“A big part of a nurse’s job is translation. We have to turn...

“A big part of a nurse’s job is translation. We have to turn medical language into common language. We explain the ‘why’s.’ Why they can’t eat. Why there is pain. Why their hair is falling out. You never know what those big medical words mean to a child, so we do everything we can to demystify them. If they play sports, we may describe their tumor as a baseball. And everyone knows that baseballs don’t belong in your belly. Ninety percent of them play video games, so sometimes the cancer is a monster. We’ve got to shoot the monster. We’ve got to bomb the monster. But we’re going to work together and get that monster. We’ll use any frame of reference that they understand: their favorite TV show, their favorite book, their favorite toy. And if we have an adolescent who’s a little bit angry, we’ll just shove our foot up the cancer’s ass.”