Meet our Nurse of the Week, Tricia Seaman, the oncology nurse who adopted her cancer patient’s 8-year-old son after she passed away . Tricia was an oncology nurse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania when she met her patient, Tricia Somers. At the end of Somers’ three-week hospital stay, she discovered she was terminal. As the nurse and patient got to know each other, Tricia Somers asked her nurse “When I die, will you and your husband take my son?”

Seaman was 43 when she met her new patient Tricia Somers in March 2014. Somers was 45 at the time and had been diagnosed with a rare liver cancer the previous year. She was in recovery when she entered into Seaman’s care, but her doctors weren’t hopeful about her outcome. Seaman recalls how difficult it was to see such a young patient so ill.

Quickly learning that her patient had an 8-year-old son named Wesley, Seaman had even more empathy for Somers who was a single mom. When Somers learned that she was terminal three weeks later, Seaman was shocked by her patient’s request that she take her son after she died. However, after having four children with her husband, Seaman and her family were considering adding to their family by adopting. They had already been approved as foster parents but hadn’t been contacted yet.

During her hospital stay Somers didn’t have much of a support system, so Seaman and her family took her patient and son in to stay with them over Mother’s Day weekend. Their time together was enjoyed by both families so as Somers’ health began to further decline, she and her son moved in with the Seamans to allow Wesley to start adjusting to his new and much larger family.

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They became a part of Seamans family, even going on vacations together, making a slow transition to prepare Wesley as well as possible for the big transitions going on in his young life. He knew what was going to happen to his mom, and when Somers passed away in the winter of 2014, the Seamans seamlessly took over guardianship of Wesley. Two years later, Seaman says that Wesley blends right in with their family. Now 10, he has adapted to his new family, accepting his three new sisters and brother, and even referring to Seaman and her husband as his parents.

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