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For the past two years, Jasmin Lecadre would finish classes at NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing and head straight to a cancer clinic, moving between student and patient life each day.
She was not there for clinical training.
She was there as a patient.
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, Lecadre continued receiving monthly infusions throughout nursing school, often scheduling treatments at the end of the week so she could spend weekends recovering before returning to class and clinicals.
Now, the Staten Island mother of two has graduated with her BSN from NYU, completing a journey shaped by caregiving, grief, survival, and compassionate nursing care.
“You know when you go hiking, and you get to the top, and you look down surveying all you’ve done? You’re like, ‘Wow, I did this.’ That’s what it feels like,” she says.
While undergoing monthly cancer treatments, Lecadre earned her nursing degree from NYU, and that experience is shaping her approach to patient advocacy, empathy, and compassionate care.
Nursing School While Battling Cancer
One of the hardest moments during nursing school came during Lecadre’s pediatric rotation at NYU Langone Health.
Her clinical assignment landed immediately after one of her treatment days, leaving no recovery time before she had to function in class and clinicals.
“Usually, I used Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to recover after treatment, just to get myself together enough to face the next week,” she says. “But that weekend, I didn’t get that time.”
The exhaustion became overwhelming.
“I don’t even know how to fully describe how awful I felt,” Lecadre says. “It was more than tired. It was like my body had nothing left to give, but I still had to get up, show up, be present, and function like I was okay.”
Still, she kept going.
“I had already survived so much, and I didn’t want that moment to be the thing that stopped me,” she says.
To get through it, she leaned on prayer, rest whenever possible, alternative medication, and a simple resolve to keep moving forward.
“Even if I had to move slowly, I was still moving forward.”
From Caregiver to Nursing Student
Long before entering nursing school, Lecadre spent years caring for others.
She worked as a nanny helping mothers with newborns, served as a CNA caring for patients at the end of life, and raised her two children while often putting her own dreams on hold.
Like many second-career nursing students, Lecadre says she spent decades prioritizing everyone else before finally choosing herself.
After a devastating separation and a period of depression, she found herself questioning what came next.
“I remember lying in bed crying and asking myself, ‘Who am I now?’” she says.
A conversation with a nurse friend, Tonya Lawrence, changed the course of her life.
Lecadre admitted she had always dreamed of becoming a nurse, especially after watching the British drama “Call the Midwife,” but believed she was too old to start over.
“She laughed and said, ‘You’re never too old,’” Lecadre recalls.
Lawrence encouraged her to research nursing school requirements and set small, achievable goals. Lecadre enrolled at Borough of Manhattan Community College in the fall of 2021 and later transferred to NYU Meyers through the university’s Community College Transfer Opportunity Program (CCTOP).
“That ‘homework’ changed everything,” Lecadre says. “It gave me direction when I didn’t have any. It made the dream feel possible instead of impossible.”
The Nurse Who Changed Her Life
Lecadre says her experience as a cancer patient changed how she views nursing care.
“Being a cancer patient changed everything about how I understand nursing,” she says. “I got to see the other side of care, not from a textbook, not from clinicals, but from the bed.”
She remembers the fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability of depending on nurses to explain what was happening in ways that made it easier to cope.
“A nurse who explains what they are doing. A nurse who notices your face when you are trying to be brave. A nurse who advocates for you when you don’t have the energy to advocate for yourself,” she says. “That experience made me want to be the kind of nurse who makes patients feel seen, safe, and cared for.”
One nurse, in particular, left a lasting impact.
On the morning of her 12-hour cancer surgery, Lecadre says she was terrified.
“People kept coming in and asking the same questions over and over, and all I could think was, am I going to wake up? Is everything going to be okay?”
Then an operating room nurse named Jasmin approached her bedside.
“She said, ‘You’re here, and I’m going to make sure they take great care of you.’ That one sentence settled something in me.”
The nurse introduced Lecadre to the surgical team, reassured her throughout preparation, and sang along to her favorite album while the operating room staff prepared for surgery.
“In that moment, I felt seen,” Lecadre says. “I wasn’t just a case or a surgery on the schedule.”
The experience reshaped her understanding of nursing.
“She taught me that nursing is not only about skill, although skill matters deeply,” Lecadre says. “It is also about presence.”
Carrying a Promise Across the Graduation Stage
When Lecadre crossed the graduation stage, she was thinking about her best friend, Mymoona, an RN who died from esophageal cancer during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Before her death, the two friends talked often about Lecadre returning to school and eventually becoming a nurse.
“We used to dream about becoming travel nursing buddies; her in med-surg and me in maternity,” Lecadre says.
Before she passed away, Mymoona urged her to pursue nursing and earn her BSN.
“She told me, ‘You’d better go back and get your BSN. Promise me that.’”
On the morning Mymoona died, Lecadre made that promise.
“So when I walked across that stage, I saw her face,” she says. “I thought about that promise and about all the moments I wanted to quit but didn’t.”
“And as I shook the professors’ hands, I was grinning from ear to ear because I knew I had done it. I made her proud. And I made myself proud, too.”
The Kind of Nurse She Hopes to Become
Lecadre plans to take her licensing exam this summer and hopes to begin working in New York City before eventually returning to graduate school to become a midwife focused on community nursing and maternal health.
“When I walk into a patient’s room, I hope they feel that I am on their side,” she says.
She hopes patients feel safe asking questions, expressing fears, and trusting that someone truly cares about what happens to them.
“I want to give patients even a small piece of what Jasmin, the OR nurse, gave me,” Lecadre says. “The feeling that someone is paying attention, cares, and they are not alone.”
“If I can help someone feel a little less afraid, a little more human, and strong enough to see many more sunrises, then I know I am becoming the kind of nurse I was meant to be.”
And as she moves toward that future, Lecadre says she carries the lesson that patient care is as much about presence as it is about skill.
