‘I wanted to help them the way my nurses had helped me’

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“I went through intense treatment, but now I don’t remember the bad times in the hospital, just the special visitations and wonderful nurses that took my mind off my illness,” says Hensley. “I had some fantastic nurses; after chemo, you feel nauseous, but then the steroids make you crave crazy things. Once, at 3 a.m., I woke up craving a rootbeer float, and one of my nurses got me one.

“After going through everything, I knew I wanted to be a nurse working with kids with cancer. I wanted to help them the way my nurses had helped me.”

The daughter of Paula Hensley, who still lives in Belmont, and Vaughn Hensley in Alabama, Caitlin was able to keep up with her studies at home, going in to school when she felt well enough. She returned full-time in sixth grade.

“After graduation, I took my general classes at Wright State University, then went to the Kettering College School of Nursing.” Since then, she’s worked at a children’s hospital in Ohio as a pediatric oncology nurse.

“Like my nurses, I try to make it fun for my patients when I can help them, and play with the younger ones,” she says. “There are ups and downs, and times when I leave work shaken, but there are more good days than bad and I’ve never doubted my decision.”

Cris Peterson, area director of the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society (LLS), remembers when Caitlin was in middle school and volunteered: “I’d pick her up and take her to schools where she’d talk to groups, explaining what it was like, helping students to better understand what their classmates with cancer were going through.”

Peterson left her job in 2006 to work for another nonprofit organization, so she lost touch with Caitlin. “But I returned in 2015, and one day my assistant called and told me we had a new volunteer who said she knew me — it was Caitlin.”

It just so happened that the second year of Subaru’s national Love to Care initiative was coming up, when volunteers deliver blankets and craft kits provided by Subaru and care cards written by its customers to cancer patients.

“In Dayton,” Peterson said, “I coordinate with Subaru of Dayton and Wagner’s Subaru, with Children’s and Kettering Network to be recipients and allow volunteers to meet with the patients to personally deliver the blankets, craft kits and cards.

“Caitlin returned to Children’s Medical Center July 6, this time as a volunteer with LLS. It was wonderful. She’s an amazing young woman and has come full circle,” Peterson said.

Although Caitlin returns to Dayton Children’s annually for tests, this was her first time back in the pediatric oncology ward with patients. “I definitely remembered being there, and I shared my own story with the patients as I gave them blankets and craft kits. It was so rewarding.”

She encourages others to get involved with LLS.

A local Light the Night event is coming up on Oct. 5 at Fraze Pavillion; anyone interested can visit the website at www.lightthenight.org/ or go online to www.LLS.org/soh to learn what other events are taking place in our area.