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Student who beat childhood cancer takes job with nurses who saved her

A newly qualified children’s nurse is to join the team that saved her life when she was two and inspired her to join the profession.
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A newly qualified children’s nurse is set to join the ward where team members once saved her life and inspired her to become a nurse.

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Millie Osman with nurses who treated her as a child: (left to right) Angie Fisher,
Jan Allen, Millie, Lesley McGhee and Natalie Steward. Picture: Gregg Brown

Millie Osman was just two when she was diagnosed with leukaemia.

She underwent two years of chemotherapy, spending time on Bergholt Ward at Ipswich Hospital, Suffolk.

Twenty years later, Ms Osman is to take up a full-time job on the children's ward, after carrying out a placement there during her nursing degree at Suffolk University.

She said: ‘I'm asked all the time if I remember anything from that time, and I say the only memories I have are good.

Dream job

‘We stayed in touch with a lot of the nurses so that's what inspired me to get into it.

‘My dream job would be as a children's oncology nurse.’

Ms Osman said there were some ‘bizarre’ moments during her studies, such as being assigned to a tutor and mentor who had once administered her chemotherapy.

Ms Osman, the niece of former England footballer Russell Osman, said she was driven to show her patients the same level of compassion and care that she herself had received.

Good relationships

‘There is a lot more to nursing than just giving medicine and getting people home,’ said Ms Osman.

‘When I started this degree, I was shocked that not everyone was so concentrated on building good relationships with patients.

‘That's something I want to do as a nurse – try to make hospital not as bad as it could be.’

Her parents have described themselves as ‘proud’ and Ms Osman featured on the front page of her local newspaper, the Ipswich Star, when she qualified, just as she had in March 1998 when she beat cancer.


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