Southern Fall/Winter 2022

RESILIENCE
Diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia during her senior year of high school, Emily
Kyzer Browne ’00 uses what she learned from her experience in her career as a pediatric
oncology nurse practitioner at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. As a
survivor, she feels called to support the needs of children with similar diagnoses.
“When I applied to Birmingham-Southern, an education major was my designated track,” Browne
says. “But then, as my medical treatment progressed, the nurse practitioners who cared for me made
such an impact. My mom asked me, ‘Don’t you want to do something in medicine? You’d be really
good at that. You like science.’”
Browne finished chemotherapy in April 1998, close to the end of her sophomore year. After
graduating from BSC with a biology degree, Browne earned a Master of Science in nursing from
Vanderbilt University in 2002 and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Vanderbilt in 2013.
In honor of her college advisor and biology professor, the late Dr. Jeannette Runquist, Browne
endowed a scholarship to BSC. She served as Dr.
Runquist’s teaching assistant and as a student mentor
for first-year advisees.
“I never had the confidence to pursue these things
on my own,” says Browne, “but, because of her, I gained
a ton of experience and confidence.”
After completing chemotherapy, Browne was
considered cured, with a low chance of recurrence
after five years. She recognizes her good fortune,
recalling a time in college when she learned that one of
her friends had passed away from the same disease.
“I walked out of my dorm room and looked around
and thought, ‘I don’t know who to talk to about this,
because I don’t feel like anybody around me is going
to necessarily understand.’ Of course, my friends
were supportive. It’s just that it takes a different level
to understand this kind of thing, and how it personally
affected me.”
It was a formative time for Browne — navigating new
college experiences as a cancer patient and survivor.
Browne’s current position as director of the Transition
Oncology Program at St. Jude allows her to support
others navigating a similar transition from patient to
survivor. One common misconception about the end of
treatment is that it’s an exciting and happy time.
“It is for sure — you’ve gone through a lot, and you
survived,” she says. “It’s fantastic to be done with the
weekly visits to the clinic and the chemotherapy and
the side effects from medication, but it is also often a
very scary time. It can be anxiety-provoking, because
you feel like this safety net has been removed. You’re
not checking your labs as often. You’re not on that
medicine that was keeping things at bay, and so in this
phase, with every little sniffle and cough and bruise,
you start to think, oh, no, has it come back?”
She says that, for survivors, everything has changed
since the initial diagnosis.
“The biggest thing that we do for families is provide
anticipatory guidance. Here’s how you might feel;
here’s what you might experience; and really just trying
Thoughts on Courage
Hear Emily Kyzer Browne’s speech
on courage from 100 Minutes on
the Hilltop in 2018.
to normalize that and prepare families for that transition. Otherwise, the patient and their family
might feel like they’re in a black hole where no one really understands what’s going on. Friends and
family might be relieved that it’s all over. They see the patient appearing to be healthier and feel like
there’s nothing to worry about, but the survivor is always worried about disease recurrence, and
about long-term side effects which may not even appear for months to years later.”
The program includes making sure that, as children return to school and regular activities, their
teachers will understand and know how to be supportive.
“It’s a phase of treatment that’s not really been well studied. We know a lot about the actual
treatment itself, and we know a lot about the physical aspects of our long-term survivors of
childhood cancer, but we don’t know a lot about what happens emotionally and socially in those first
few years off therapy. That’s not been studied as well, so we’re hoping to change that.”
FALL/WINTER 2022 / 27