Meg Lewis: Nicole Colantonio

      As I sat down with Nicole, I was prepared to have a conversation with a girl my age, which I could obviously relate to. What I came out with was a conversation with someone who was wise beyond her years.

     Two days after moving into her sophomore year dorm room at Stonehill College, Nicole Colantonio received a call from her doctor, she had stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She immediately began a whirlwind of surgeries and treatments, and started calling Children’s hospital at Boston her second home.

     Children’s Hospital was somewhere Colantonio had never been before her illness, and yet it has changed her perception of hospitals in a good way.

“I was blown away at how nice everyone was. I had to get a surgery that I was awake for and there was one guy whose job it was to hold my hand, and he did, for the whole time!” Colantonio said.

     Because of the amazing care she received during her time in Children’s, Colantonio has decided that she definitely wants to work in hospitals, or social work in the future.

     As she eloquently spoke of her whirlwind past year, you would never know she was the girl who managed to both spell and bubble in her name wrong on her PSATs because she got so nervous.

“Weirdly enough, having cancer has made me more confident, and able to talk to people more, because everyone was coming to me asking questions.” Colantonio said.

     In every other way, Colantonio is a normal 19 year-old girl. During the time I interviewed her, we somehow segued into her intense love for Chinese food. She gave a great recommendation for a restaurant down the street from Stonehill, and subtly told me to look for a figure named “George”, who has told her she is his best customer.

     Although she may have loved the care she was receiving, there were aspects of Children’s that didn’t apply to her situation. Her boyfriend of over a year, Joey Scherr, was not close family, so couldn’t be let into her treatments. Colantonio and Scherr would put their displays of affection on hold and pretend to be siblings when he would want to visit her.

“They never really have boyfriends to deal with in Children’s, so it was a little weird, but we made it work.”

     If having one daughter with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma wasn’t enough for this family, Nicole’s 14 year-old sister, Kaitlyn, was diagnosed soon after with double kidney failure.

     Thankfully, Kaitlyn and Nicole’s dad was recently found out to be a match for a kidney transplant that will take place this summer, ironically, on Nicole’s 20^th birthday.

     Everyone who knows Colantonio at Stonehill College are nothing if not impressed by her spirit and drive. Professor Estelle Wenson had Nicole when she was a first-semester freshman, and again this current semester.  

      “Considering what she’s going through, not only with herself, but her sister’s sickness, and the toll that is taking on her family, she is simply amazing, I don’t know how she’s doing it” Wenson said.

     A fellow student, Junior Lauren Zdanis, is in a communications course with Colantonio this semester, and had never met her before. 

“The first time I met her, I didn’t even know she had cancer until someone told me. She seemed like a normal student, and such a sweet girl.” Zdanis said.

      The feats that Colantonio has accomplished in the past year have been nothing short of impressive. What she told me next was simply astounding. She’s on track to graduate with the rest of her class. This is thanks partly to AP credits Colantonio received in high school, but mostly to the faculty at Stonehill, as they taped lectures last semester.

“The staff has been so accommodating and so willing to help out, it really has been great” Colantonio said.

       Recently, Stonehill College held the annual “Relay for Life”, a fundraising event for the American Cancer society. This year’s event brought over 400 students who participated. Colantonio was one of them.

     Junior at Stonehill, Bryan Tavares was there, and simply having Colantonio there to tell her story was something he won’t soon forget.

“She is truly inspirational, she was such a motivating force during Relay for Life” Tavares said.

      As of a few weeks ago, Colantonio is officially cancer free. She humbly gives credit for this accomplishment not to herself, but to her family, friends, and boyfriend who have helped her along the way. If she likes it or not, Nicole has become an inspiration to many students on the Stonehill College campus. One of her classmates, Vivian Fitzgerald, is one of those inspired students.

“She inspires me to keep going through whatever I’m going through, if she can have a smile on her face doing what she’s doing, then so can I“ Fitzgerald said.