Elk Grove cancer survivor becomes cancer nurse

Kelly Ramljak, 23, of Elk Grove Village vividly remembers one of the nurses who cared for her as a child while she battled acute lymphocytic leukemia, at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Her name was Julia, and her words of comfort made a lasting impression on Ramljak.

"I know how you feel," she told the 12-year-old. "I had cancer as a child."

Ramljak can still picture her, as she speaks fondly of all of her nurses who cared for her at Children's.

"Her words really touched me," Ramljak says. "Ever since then, I've known I wanted to become a nurse. I wanted to give back to everyone who cared and looked out for me and my family."

Most of all, she says, she was determined to help other children like her.

This month, Ramljak and her family have reflected back on those years of overcoming the life threatening disease, and of the many medical professionals who helped them through it.

On June 1, Ramljak graduated from the nursing program at Elmhurst College, after beginning her course work at Harper College in Palatine. She still needs to pass her state board examination, but this much she knows: she landed her dream job.

In September, Ramljak will begin a four-month orientation, before starting as a registered nurse on the oncology unit at Children's Memorial Hospital.

"It's my dream job," she says simply. "It's the only place I applied, and it took two and a half months before I heard, but I got it, and I'm thrilled."

So are her parents, Ray and Carrie, who watched helplessly as the youngest of their three children was diagnosed with the disease at the end of her sixth-grade year at Meade Junior High School in Elk Grove.

"She was very sick," her mother, Carrie, says. "I can't tell you how many trips we made to Children's, even when she wasn't having chemo."

Ramljak endured nearly three years of chemotherapy, spinal taps and bone marrow biopsies, causing her to miss nearly all of seventh grade, and much of eighth.

Some of her setbacks ranged from contracting shingles and the chickenpox, to being diagnosed with what doctors thought was Crohn's disease, and later having emergency gallbladder surgery, all resulting from all of the scar tissue that built up during her treatment.

"Through it all, she never complained," her mother says. "She was very brave and calm and accepting of what they had to do."

Ramljak says simply that she knew what she had to do, to overcome the disease, and she did it. She applied that same resolve to her progression through Conant High School and college, working her way through both.

She has managed her studies while working as a secretary on weekends on the oncology floor at Alexian Brothers Medical Center, as well as her longtime position with the Elk Grove Park District, most recently at the senior center.

"She's a very special girl," says co-worker Barbara Walker, at the Hattendorf Center in Elk Grove. "We all love her here."