St. Jude patient Sabrina found solace — and power — in poetry

Sabrina was 9 and in treatment at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital® when her fourth-grade teacher assigned her to memorize a poem as homework. She chose Langston Hughes’ “Mother to Son.”  

In it, a mother speaks to her son about her life, which “ain’t been no crystal stair,” but she encourages him to always press on: 

“So boy, don’t you turn back.  

Don’t you set down on the steps 

’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.” 

At that moment, Sabrina’s life was hard. On a Sunday after church in the spring of 2009, her grandmother noticed a lump on Sabrina’s right cheek. Her Aunt Paula, a physician, took one look at it and rushed her niece to the hospital where she worked for tests ─ and then to another hospital for more tests. 

Sabrina was referred to St. Jude, where the next day, she was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancerous tumor that develops in soft tissue.  

Even at 9, “I understood what was happening to me,” Sabrina said. Her Aunt Fannie had died of breast cancer five months earlier. Her Uncle Robert had worked decades earlier at St. Jude as one of its first Black pharmacists. 

“I was very aware of what cancer was ─ and what cancer could do,” Sabrina said. “I was very aware that I could die.” 

At St. Jude, Sabrina awoke from surgery unable to talk after a tracheotomy was performed to safeguard her breathing. She tried to ask her grandmother where she was, but no words came out. “It was terrifying,” Sabrina said. She was in the hospital for weeks and went through a year of intense treatment that included chemotherapy and radiation therapy. 

Through it all, her mom called her “a little soldier.” Sabrina didn’t tell anyone she was afraid. She knew her family took their cues from her. But Sabrina could pour her fears into her notebooks. 

‘My body at war with itself’ 

Sabrina has always loved words, with the books she read transporting her to different places and times. She wrote endlessly in notebooks she carried with her everywhere. At St. Jude, Sabrina began writing poetry to help her untangle what she was going through and put it in some semblance of order. 

She struggled through treatment, reactions to medicines and sleepless nights. She was nauseous all the time. “There were very few things that I would actually want to eat,” Sabrina said. She was fitted with a feeding tube. 

“It’s an interesting feeling to know that you are simultaneously growing, but you are also in the process of dying,” Sabrina said. “I could feel my body at war with itself.” 

Sick as she was, Sabrina needed help with almost everything. “Writing was something I could do on my own,” she said. She didn’t have to be careful about what she wrote in the privacy of her notebooks. “These were my thoughts,” Sabrina said. Her words. 

She filled notebook after notebook. And as Sabrina did her homework, reciting Hughes’ poem again and again to memorize it, she said, “I really liked the way the words felt in my mouth.”  

The words had power, the economy of language conveying emotion more intensely than a straightforward description did. Just like in her notebooks. It was then that Sabrina knew she wanted to write poetry. 

Finding solace in words 

Sabrina was 10 when her first poem was published in her school’s literary magazine, a haiku about shrimp cocktail. She kept writing, finding order and solace in the words she wrote as she coped with the aftermath of treatment. 

The impact of cancer doesn’t end when treatment ends. Survivors like Sabrina can face health issues — mental, physical and emotional — that persist after treatment or develop years later, profoundly impacting their quality of life.   

Sabrina was 14, a freshman in high school, when she celebrated five years of clear scans. It’s a big moment for childhood cancer survivors. After five years of clear scans, there’s a lower risk of recurrence. 

That same year, Sabrina learned radiation therapy had caused cochlear nerve damage in her right ear. Her left ear is fine, so she hadn’t realized she was hard of hearing. She’d even passed hearing tests.  

Sabrina was fitted for a hearing aid at St. Jude, and suddenly she could hear what she had been missing. The sound a trash bag makes when someone shakes it open. The buzz in the school cafeteria.  

Sabrina was a top student, inducted into the National Honor Society and National Latin Honor Society, and involved in sports — cross-country and fencing — and the arts. She played clarinet in the band, sang in choir and acted in theater productions. Her senior year, she was editor-in-chief of the literary magazine that first published her poetry. 

Sabrina enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis, where she worked on the student newspaper and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.® Sabrina stayed involved in theater as a stage manager, sometimes juggling three shows at once. 

She was a senior in 2022, just weeks before graduation, when she woke one morning seeing double. Maybe she’d stayed up too late and was tired. But when Sabrina’s vision didn’t clear, her Aunt Paula, the doctor, told her to go to the emergency room.  

Sabrina was scared. Could her cancer be back? With her previous diagnosis and family history, it’s a constant worry. “I’m a little more concerned than the average bear about it,” Sabrina said. 

Through testing Sabrina learned she had sixth nerve palsy, or abducens nerve palsy, a condition that affects the sixth cranial nerve which controls the muscle that moves the eye outward, likely another late effect of her cancer therapy. 

An injection of a neuro-muscular blocker into that nerve in her right eye returned her vision to normal. “We’re just hoping that it holds,” Sabrina said. Another worry. 

‘Love sharing my words’  

Sabrina graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and creative writing in May 2022 and enrolled at the University of Memphis, where she works on the college’s literary journal and teaches freshman composition. 

Now 25, Sabrina will graduate this May with a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing with a focus in poetry. She passed her comprehensive exams and is preparing to defend her thesis, which examines themes of grief, the South and Black womanhood, and of course poetry. 

“I love sharing my words with others,” Sabrina said. Conveying her ideas. Conjuring images in people’s minds. Creating connections with those who read her words — or hear her read them. 

She carefully chooses each word for its weight and significance, intentionally creating breaks in each line. The rhythm, meter and sound patterns mirror her emotions. 

Sabrina prefers written poetry because readers can hold onto the words longer, engage more meaningfully with the work. “To be able to really feel them, you have to see them on the page,” Sabrina said.  

When Sabrina speaks at St. Jude events, she pens original spoken-word pieces. “When the words are spoken, when they sit in the air, they do feel different,” she said. That can be powerful, too. 

In 2022, Sabrina wrote a spoken-word piece called, “When I was Nine,” to perform at an event benefitting St. Jude. The piece begins: 

“When I was nine I was prepared for my funeral. 

I was ready to bury myself in the war zone of my body, 

discharge myself honorably for a good fight not won. 

When you’re nine how do you tell your parents you’re always tired? 

That a way out of no way  

is impossible because when you close your eyes 

you see skeletons and 

they are always dancing the graveyard boogie? 

That your good days are not good and  

your bad days are worse?” 

Sabrina is grateful for the people who helped her through it, her family — her wrist is tattooed with the number 3 with a halo over it, a tribute to her mother, aunt and grandmother — and St. Jude. 

The end of her 2022 spoken word piece reflects that gratitude:  

“St. Jude lays stones for streets of safe passage 

so kids like me can grow up to be adults like me.” 

“I’m not who I am today without St. Jude,” Sabrina said. A poet — and survivor.  

Sabrina Spence wrote “When I was Nine” in 2022 to deliver at an event to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: 

When I was nine I was prepared for my funeral. 

I was ready to bury myself in the war zone of my body, 

discharge myself honorably for a good fight not won. 

When you’re nine how do you tell your parents you’re always tired? 

That a way out of no way  

is impossible because when you close your eyes 

you see skeletons and 

they are always dancing the graveyard boogie? 

That your good days are not good and  

your bad days are worse?

 

When you’re nine how do you tell your parents 

that you wish the incubator hadn’t kept you, 

that you think their prayers are in vain, 

that you don’t think doctors can save you 

that the cancer-free ghost of your dead aunt visits you at night 

to convince you of your immortality but  

your body feels otherwise. 

 

How do you stop your body’s great suicide mission? 

You realize that sixty years ago a man named Danny Thomas had a vision 

for girls and boys who look like me, 

and him and her to live, to set their bodies illness free. 

Oh what my eyes have seen and my ears have heard 

does not equate to doctors deterred. 

St. Jude lays stones for streets of safe passage 

so kids like me can grow up to be adults like me.