The Closer to Free Ride can be a meaningful experience for a lot of people.
“I don’t share my story with everybody but there’s definitely been a lot of patients I do share it with,” said Jessica Simoes.
It’s a story that Simoes says has helped her patients at Smilow Cancer Hospital. The hematology oncology nurse was a patient in the same unit ten years ago when she was a freshman at UConn.
“I was in college when I was first diagnosed. I was actually in pharmacy school. And then my experience brought me to nursing,” Simoes said.
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A decade later, she’s on a Smilow team treating people with blood cancers similar to the cutaneous T-cell lymphoma she battled. And she’s doing it with one of her former nurses, Lisa Barbarotta.
“I had so many great nurses. Inpatient, outpatient. Everyone was always so nice to us," Simoes said.
All of that is why she’s planning her third Closer to Free Ride on September 7. She’s set for 25 miles with her coworker Wendy.
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“To actually see all of the people come together for an event as big as Closer to Free, to feel the positivity, the hope in that crowd. I can’t explain it,” she said.
She’s got a fundraising goal of $500 and she knits and sells stuffed penguins to raise money. All of the money from Closer to Free funds cancer treatment patient programs. It also supports research, which she’s seen firsthand with patients.
“It’s very interesting to see,” Simoes explained. “You have to follow all of the protocols and the labs and some of this is eventually going to turn into some drug that’s going to save somebody, or a treatment.”
Her favorite part of the ride is seeing all of the support for the “Smilow salute,” where patients and staff from her oncology floor come outside to the front of the hospital to cheer on riders.
“We’ve had a lot of difficult cases lately. The patients are sick,” Simoes said. “We’ve had a lot do well and a lot, not do so well. So, this is for all of them, in their honor, in their memory, for the patients yet to come.”
It’s a full circle moment for the cancer patient-turned cancer nurse.
“Sometimes it’s hard to think about and hard to believe that I went through all of that stuff,” she said. “And I’m here and I’m a nurse here and I’m a survivor.”
