Former cancer patient will graduate from nursing school

“Please tell me this hurts,” her physician mom pleaded with Caroline Robinson as she pressed a lump on her neck back in 2023. Robinson had just started the spring semester of her sophomore year at Carolina and was visiting her parents in Cary, North Carolina. Her necklace hung oddly against her chest.

“No, I don’t feel anything,” Robinson replied. Four days later, she got her first dose of chemotherapy.

The lump on Robinson’s neck was Hodgkin lymphoma. Though highly treatable, the disease abruptly shifted her life for the next six months. She spent the next few days in her childhood bedroom, repeatedly asking, “Why me?”

Who gets diagnosed with cancer when they’re only 20 years old?

The infusion chair

Robinson’s first round of chemotherapy went without a hitch. She slept well that night and felt amazing the day after. But later, the side effects became unbearable. Her third dose brought fever-like symptoms — muscle aches, cramping and shivers — and landed her in the emergency room.

Managing her symptoms became all-consuming. She’d get to the hospital at 8 a.m. every other Friday and not leave until almost 5 p.m. At home, her parents would inject steroids every six hours until they could stop on Sunday.

Robinson decided to finish the semester, despite a demanding courseload of prerequisites for the nursing degree she is now completing. Monday through Thursday she’d attend class in person when possible, reserving every other Friday for day-long infusions. Against all odds, she ended the semester with a 4.0 GPA.

Adolescent and young adult cancer patients

As a young adult, Robinson fell in the gap between pediatric and adult care. UNC Health addresses this gap through the Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Program, launched by the Be Loud! Sophie Foundation in partnership with the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2015. The program honors the wish of the late Sophie Steiner, a former patient, that patients aged 13 to 39 years old receive developmentally appropriate care.

“There just hasn’t been, historically, a model of care that specifically calls out the unique needs of adolescents and young adults who are sort of caught between pediatric and adult medicine models,” said Dr. Andrew Smitherman, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at UNC Health who also serves as medical director of the AYA Cancer Program.

One of those unique needs is fertility considerations. In Robinson’s case, she received a Lupron injection once a month that helped protect her eggs but also brought on menopause-like symptoms.

“I’d be sitting in class and get a hot flash. My entire face would be bright red,” said Robinson. “I had those little stamp-on eyebrows to make it look like I still had them — well, the sweat would wipe them right off.”

New places

As a junior, Robinson spent her spring semester studying abroad in Ireland, wanting to escape the shadow of the last six months. She had a wig and the scar from a port, but her eyebrows and lashes grew back.

Robinson will graduate in May 2026 with a degree in nursing. She enters the career path with an acute understanding of patient needs from a time as a patient herself.

“I wouldn’t say if I could do it all over again, what I went through is what I’d want,” Robinson said. “But I’m so grateful now for the experience that I did have and the way it’s connected me to a whole community that I would’ve never even been able to understand or really be involved with.”