Full circle

A childhood cancer survivor returns to work at the hospital that saved her life.

For her parents, Jennifer Toth’s childhood was a time of almost unbearable fear and anxiety. But for Jennifer herself, the memories are mostly happy and normal—a testament to the staff at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was treated for hepatoblastoma, a very rare cancerous tumor that primarily affects young children.

Jennifer Toth

That’s the main reason why, a couple of decades after her cancer diagnosis, Jennifer has returned to CHOP to work as a pediatric oncology nurse—with a mission to help as many children like her heal and feel comfortable in the most trying circumstances.

It was a typical Friday night in the fall of 1995 when Gail Toth felt a lump under her daughter’s ribs while giving her a bath. She called the family’s pediatrician and they were sent for an ultrasound and a CAT scan at their local hospital in northern New Jersey. The results were not good.

Jennifer had a mass in her liver the size of a softball.

After several long stays at CHOP (where their doctors had immediately referred them) and six months of chemotherapy, the tumor shrunk from the size of a softball to that of a golf ball. At that point, a team of doctors led by Scott Adzick—now CHOP’s Surgeon-in-Chief and the director of the Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment—successfully removed it. She’s been cancer free ever since.

About 20 years later, Adzick and Jennifer reconnected when Gail reached out to invite the surgeon to Jennifer’s graduation ceremony from Penn Nursing. Adzick remembered his patient right away and was moved to learn about what he calls her “holy mission.” “She said she wanted to work at CHOP, and I said, ‘Of course you do, that’s your destiny!’” says Adzick.

Even aside from the reunion with her old surgeon, graduating from Penn was emotional for Jennifer. “I think for my parents, with any big milestone, there’s always the thought of, ‘We didn’t know if you’d be alive to get to this point,’” she says.

Read more at The Pennsylvania Gazette.