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Patients Tell Their Stories - Florice Simeone |
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Patients Tell Their Stories - Florice Simeone
Florice Simeone of Florence knew from the time she was a child that she would be a nurse when she grew up. "My mother said I used to break my dolls so that I could patch them up," says Flo, who worked as a nurse at Cooley Dickinson for nearly 40 years before she retired in 1994.
Flo spent the last 20 or so of her Cooley years working in oncology with Dr. George Bowers, so it was ironic that, nine years after she chose early retirement, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But this steady, gracious woman wasn't shocked; in many ways, she says, she saw that coming, too.
"I think I felt that I had taken care of so many cancer patients, it was just my turn," she says.
Flo is now a proud cancer survivor, and for the third year in a row, she participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life in June 2006. Cooley Dickinson is a presenting sponsor of this important community event, appropriately held in June, which is National Cancer Care Survivor month.
Flo was co-captain of her team and found the experience "very, very exciting."
Flo received chemotherapy and radiation therapy treatments at Cooley Dickinson, and she also was an active member of the support group, which she said was an enormous help to her.
"I knew so many of the people who took care of me," she says. "It was very comforting. So many of them I had worked with, and even the people I didn't know - everyone was professional and compassionate. There were lots of hugs. It just made me very proud of Cooley Dickinson."
Over the years, Flo worked on West 5 - when it was a general care ward - and she worked in medical/surgical and pediatrics before spending about 20 years in oncology.
After she was diagnosed, Dr. Timothy O'Brien performed a partial mastectomy on Flo to remove two different cancerous areas in one breast, and under Dr. Bowers' care, she received four chemotherapy treatments over three months as well as a six-week course of radiation treatments.
"It brought back so many memories," says Flo. "It made me wish I could have known more about my patients," she says. "I saw them for such a short time and never really knew what they went through. I never got to hear their whole story."
Flo says there was not one thing anyone could have changed to make the experience better for me.
Flo grew up in Deerfield with three brothers and a sister. Along with the experience she got in "treating" her dolls, she also earned nursing experience working during the summers at the Sweet Brook Nursing Home in Williamstown, which her aunt owned.
From the time she was 14, Flo offered patients care that ranged from bathing to baking.
"I just like to work with people who need help. I like to take care of people who are needy," she says.
After her graduation from Deerfield High School in 1954, Flo attended the Cooley Dickinson Hospital School of Nursing, completing a three-year clinical program in 1957. Her career as a Cooley Dickinson nurse began immediately.
"Nursing sort of consumed almost all parts of my life, outside of taking care of my family," she says. "I had a busy family life. There was nothing left after being a good mother and a good nurse."
Flo and her husband, Mario, a retired salesman for Robbins Beauty Supply, have two children: Mark Simeone of Belchertown, who also has two children; and Carla Kone of Westfield, who has one daughter.
Flo worries about the ramifications her breast cancer will have on her daughter's and granddaughter's health, but she is no longer worried about herself.
Flo strongly recommends that all women keep up with their annual mammograms, do monthly self-exams, maintain a healthy lifestyle and keep educated on the topic.
For those diagnosed with breast cancer, she offers this advice:
"Get as much information as possible, so you can make choices - your own choices that you can live with. And speak to people who have been through it, not to do what they did, but to just get information and support.
"Education is the key."
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