Former Beaumont cancer patient now working as graduate nurse

ROYAL OAK — Molly Pratt once was a cancer patient at Corewell Health William Beaumont University Hospital. She now is working at the hospital as a nurse.

In 2014, during her junior year of high school, Pratt, an Armada resident, discovered a lump on her neck. Initially, she believed it to be a swollen tonsil. When the lump never went away, Pratt underwent blood tests and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Pratt went from worrying about her college entrance exam and homecoming to her cancer diagnosis.

“I would have never thought I would have heard the word ‘cancer’ come from my doctor’s mouth,” she said.

Over the next couple of years, Pratt would undergo three rounds of chemotherapy. This was because her cancer relapsed twice. She eventually would have a bone marrow transplant.

About halfway through her treatment, in 2016, Pratt would become inspired by the nurses who were there to help her during her stay at the hospital. Originally wanting to become an agricultural engineer, she decided to pursue a career in nursing because of her experience in the pediatric wing.

“All the nurses kept encouraging me and telling me, ‘You’d be such a great nurse,’ because I was always so curious about every little thing that they were doing and how they were doing and what they’re doing,” she said. “I was so fascinated by it and I learned so much from being a patient. … They were more than just people that gave you medicine. Like, there’s so much more to nursing, and I didn’t realize that and they kind of expressed it to me. They just inspired me so much. So then after talking to them for so long, I was like, wow, I would love to do this. I want to help people and encourage people, and nursing is probably one of the best things you could do to do that.”

Laurie Johnson was one of Pratt’s nurses during her stay, and while Pratt was going through a tough situation, Johnson remembered Pratt as always having a smile on her face and was someone who didn’t complain about what she was going through.

What Johnson also remembered was how inquisitive Pratt was about the types of treatments she was undergoing.

“She would always want to know, not in a, like, she didn’t trust this way, but in a very concerning way, like she wanted to learn,” she said. “For a young girl, in her instance, coming into a hospital with this diagnosis, not knowing any of us, and then spending so much time with all of us, you know, it’s like a second family type thing. We’re there with them 24/7; the nurses are there in the room 99% of the time with the patient.”

Johnson said that hearing that she and the other nurses had served as an inspiration to Pratt was nice.

“That we’ve made such an impression on Molly and that she really looked up to us, and when I found out she wanted to be a nurse, that made me feel really good,” she said.

After graduating high school in 2016, Pratt took community college classes before transferring to Saginaw Valley State University, where she obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and graduated in 2022.

In January, nine years after her initial diagnosis, Pratt, 24, was back at Beaumont as a graduate nurse, working her first day on the pediatric floor.

Johnson is Pratt’s preceptor, and she said it was cool to see Pratt walk in on her first day, as opposed to coming in as a patient as she once had to before.

“She’s very eager to learn. She’s very patient-oriented, family-oriented and that’s gonna be a huge asset to her because she can honestly tell somebody’s feelings, especially the hematology parents’ and children’s,” she said. “‘I know what you’ve, what you’re going through. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.’ … She can actually say that, ‘I know what you’re going through.’”

Pratt said her experience that first week was amazing. She had the opportunity to work with hematology-oncology patients, and she said she didn’t know how to describe how she felt being able to work with them.

“Just being able to see them and kind of hear what they’ve gone through and being able to tell them I’ve been through the same kind of situation and look where I’m at; like, I’m doing great things and I have strong hopes that you’re going to be able to one day as well,” she said. “It’s just a completely different feeling. And even like when I don’t have (hematology-oncology) patients, because most of the time I do not …  being able to help people and send them home feeling much better than when they came in, it’s just so rewarding to me. It just makes me feel very good and I’m just happy to see all those people.”