Memphis: City as Text - Researching St. Jude

For my “Memphis: City as Text” project, I will be working directly with the children at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital or the nearby Target House in a one-on-one or group setting for the next year. I lost a best friend to cancer at the age of thirteen. Jeffrey Foster was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of eight and battled it for the next five years. He was taken out of school and isolated from his friends. As he struggled with cancer, his classmates struggled with understanding what was going on. I feel compelled to work with the children at St. Jude to make their time there more enjoyable, to comfort the families and help with the burden of long hours at the bedside, and to do what I can for the doctors and nurses to make their jobs easier. Not only do I, as a volunteer, want to contribute in the efforts of saving lives, but as a student, I want to learn all that I can about St. Jude.

Research Objectives:

1. I will learn from working directly with the children and the doctors exactly what is done for the children at the hospital and the Target House. Most Memphians are aware of St. Jude as the hospital that works with children and teens to help rid their bodies of cancer and that is committed to research to develop new and better ways of fighting cancer in all forms. But most of us do not know how these tasks are performed.

2. I will research the types of cancer that are treated at St. Jude, how they affect the body, and how treatments react with children. I aim to better understand the side-effects that occur from treatment, how children respond to these physically and emotionally, and how the whole patient is treated.

3. Lastly, I expect the children can teach me something about life and resilience. We can learn to overcome the struggles of daily life by witnessing the children at St. Jude deal with their life threatening illnesses.

Presentation:

I will present my discoveries, reflections, and research in lecture format, including excerpts from my journal entries on personal experiences, staff testimonies, and research on the hospital and different forms of cancer treated there. My presentation will be an informative extemporaneous speech, but I am hoping it will be persuasive enough that some of my audience will consider contributing monetarily or in personal time.