![\"Amelia](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/amelia-hospital-523x600.jpg\")
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\u201cI\u2019ve wanted to work [at Children\u2019s Hospital of Atlanta] since I was three.\u201d\u00a0<\/i>\u2014 Amelia Ballard<\/p>\nAmelia Ballard continues her fight against cancer<\/h2>\n
In 1994, when she was only 17 months old, Amelia Ballard (\u201815) was admitted into the Children\u2019s Hospital of Atlanta, where she would spend most of the next four years in two grueling battles with cancer. In 2015, after graduating with a nursing degree from Georgia Southern, she returned to the hospital as a nurse, helping other kids win the same fight.<\/p>\n
A cancer survivor for more than 22 years, Ballard can\u2019t recall everything about her bouts with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, but she remembers that the experiences led her to a very specific dream as early as three years old\u2014to be a nurse at Children\u2019s Hospital of Atlanta (CHOA). And even though the hospital was the source of years of aggressive treatment, including intense radiation and a painful bone marrow transplant, she says it was the close relationships with her nurses she remembers most.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNursing is much more than the pokes, you know,\u201d she said. \u201cYou develop those relationships with your patients, and the nurses spent a lot of time with me, and when I was having a good moment or a good day they respected that. And they really became more like a family when we were there than anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n All of her hard work came to fruition in 2015. While she was still finishing her clinicals, she found an opening at CHOA for a patient care technician in the ER. She applied, and was called back for an interview soon after. The same day of her interview, only hours after she\u2019d returned home, she received the call telling her she\u2019d gotten the job. In 2016, she accepted a position as an RN in the emergency department.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to work there since I was three,\u201d she said. \u201cI definitely cried because that was a huge milestone in my life, a huge goal that was almost a dream that I didn\u2019t know was attainable until it happened…. So that was a big, big moment for me and my family.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When asked if she feels like the ordeal was worth it, Ballard doesn\u2019t see it like that. She doesn\u2019t focus on the painful procedures that marked her years of treatment. She remembers her parents playing games with the gloves and masks that were required to interact with her, and the nurses who let her push the plunger to flush her I.V. and bandage the boo-boos on her stuffed animals. And it\u2019s that perspective that she wants to bring to her patients.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI like to stand on the positive side of things and kind of see how far my family and I have come through it…,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to make sure to try and instill some hope into these kiddos and their parents while I\u2019m taking care of them.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Taking care of them\u2014not only like a nurse, but also like family.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u00a0Doy Cave<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to work [at Children\u2019s Hospital of Atlanta] since I was three.\u201d\u00a0\u2014 Amelia Ballard Amelia Ballard continues her fight against cancer In 1994, when she was only 17 months old, Amelia Ballard (\u201815) was admitted into the Children\u2019s Hospital of Atlanta, where she would spend most of the next four years in two grueling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":6745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[56],"class_list":["post-6743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-spring-2018"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Amelia](\"http:\/\/ww2.georgiasouthern.edu\/news\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/amelia-nurse-315x344.jpg\")
Ballard says even though getting her nursing degree often seemed like an impossible task, she enjoyed her time at Georgia Southern. In the classroom, she learned from professors like Crystal Edds-McAfee, DNP, RN, who had also worked at CHOA and taught pediatrics. Outside the classroom, Ballard worked at Camp Twin Lakes, a year-round camp for children with serious illnesses, disabilities, and other life challenges, which only reinforced her desire to pursue pediatric care.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n