{"id":43145,"date":"2016-11-09T10:47:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-09T15:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=43145"},"modified":"2022-10-25T10:24:25","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T14:24:25","slug":"social-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2016\/11\/09\/social-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Social nature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Wright<\/a>

Wright State graduate student Eric North hopes to be social worker at the same hospital where he was treated for leukemia. (Photo by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

He was sitting in a classroom at Sinclair College when he realized something was wrong \u2014 and it was terrifying.<\/p>\n

Seventeen-year-old Eric North walked out of class and slumped down on the hallway floor. He was too weak to even look for a chair.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember I started crying. I said, \u2018Man, I\u2019m in bad shape. I am sick, sick, sick,\u2019\u201d North said.<\/p>\n

When his mother picked him up in her car to take him to the doctor, he had to recline his seat so he could lie down.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, I\u2019m dying. I feel like I am dying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

North\u2019s words were prophetic. He would be diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and told he had a 30 percent of living more than five years. The devastating news that he had blood cancer was delivered by an oncologist at Dayton Children\u2019s Hospital in early 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can still picture the shirt he wore. He had a blue shirt. I can picture the tie. It was a blue-and-green-striped tie,\u201d North recalled. \u201cI remember thinking, \u2018Man, he is going to tell me something I do not want to hear.’\u201d<\/p>\n

The word \u201cleukemia\u201d rang in his ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is it,\u201d North said. \u201cMy life is over. I said, \u2018I\u2019m going to die. I\u2019m going to die. I\u2019m going to die.\u2019 I probably said it 10 times.\u201d<\/p>\n

North would spend the next seven months at the hospital, undergoing five rounds of intense chemotherapy. After that, it was many checkups at the hospital clinic and a lot of prayer to fend off the paralyzing fear that the cancer would return. At the five-year mark, he began to breathe easier.<\/p>\n

Today, the 31-year-old North is free of cancer and working on his master\u2019s degree in social work<\/a> at Wright State University. He hopes to land a job at Dayton Children\u2019s Hospital, working alongside the angels who saved his life and with children facing the same fears he once did.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve grown really close to a lot of people at Dayton Children\u2019s,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t treated as Eric, the leukemia patient. I was Eric, the person, who happens to have leukemia. You felt like you\u2019re treated as family, as a person, and not a diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n

North grew up in Kettering, the son of a woman who worked as a family support worker at Montgomery County Children\u2019s Services. He attended Miamisburg High School but dropped out.<\/p>\n

\u201dAs a 15-year-old, I was kind of a rough around the edges,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like I just didn\u2019t want to go to school. I\u2019m a lot different now.\u201d<\/p>\n

North later decided to get his General Equivalency Degree and did \u2014 at age 16. And in 2002, he enrolled at Sinclair, majoring in criminal justice.<\/p>\n

He was just in his second week of classes when his life was derailed by the leukemia diagnosis and efforts to defeat it. At one point, he had 90 percent liver failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI faced a lot of difficulties with the treatment, but I always ended up bouncing back,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Following months of chemotherapy, North became an outpatient and was heavily monitored for any signs of a relapse, which could have been a death sentence.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I would go to the clinic, I would tell myself, \u2018Man, I really hope this isn\u2019t the day they tell me I have cancer again,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Finally, North decided to embrace life instead of dreading death.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou start to learn to let go of that fear,\u201d he said. \u201cI have to live. I didn\u2019t beat this to live in constant fear. I beat this to live, to be happy and to make a difference and to do what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

North, who lives in Washington Township with his wife and 9-year-old son, says his experience has changed his outlook on life. He tries to be grateful for what he has and live each day to the fullest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m blessed to have a great life,\u201d he said. \u201cEven on bad days, I\u2019m lucky to have bad days. With all of the turmoil going on in today\u2019s world, it is easy to get caught up in the negative and focus on what\u2019s wrong. I try to look at it more in a positive sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2014, North was nominated to be Man of the Year by the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. In that role, he raised $50,000 for blood cancer research and named the research grant after Emmett Broxson, the oncologist who saved his life.<\/p>\n

And on Jan. 20, the anniversary of his 13th year off of treatment, North collected toys and other items for the patients at Children\u2019s Medical Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tell myself I don\u2019t want to get too far removed from the kid laying in the hospital bed looking out the window and seeing cars drive by and thinking, \u2018Man, I wish I was one of them,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After graduating from Sinclair in 2014, North enrolled at Wright State, embarked on the child-welfare track of social work, completed an internship at Montgomery County Children\u2019s Services and earned his bachelor\u2019s degree. He currently works as a graduate assistant at the university\u2019s Social Work Office, is completing a social work internship at Dayton Children\u2019s Hospital and is scheduled to get his master\u2019s degree in the spring.<\/p>\n

North feels like he can make the biggest difference by working as a social worker at the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope to land at Dayton Children\u2019s,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I walk in, in a sense you\u2019re going back to what was your home at one point.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric North feels like he can make the biggest difference by working as a social worker at Dayton Children\u2019s Hospital. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":43146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4299,2060,725,747,715,4889,2089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-profile","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-liberal-arts","category-news","category-social-work-social-work-human-services","category-social-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43145"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43162,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43145\/revisions\/43162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}