Meet Our Team
Q&A with Melanie Hameluck
Melanie Hameluck has volunteered with Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration since 2021. After the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she travelled to mentor and collaborate with palliative care nursing teams with our partners in India and Nepal.
What is your experience at BC Children’s Hospital and Canuck Place Children’s Hospice?
I’m in a new role as a Clinical Resource Nurse in the Oncology-Hematology Bone Marrow Transplant Program at BC Children’s Hospital. Literally my role is mentoring. I’m on the floor supporting other nurses, supporting lots of new nursing grads – teaching new skills and helping families navigate their way – advocating for them.
I started at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice eight years ago. My role was as a bedside RN which meant both 12-hour day and night shifts providing pediatric palliative care to children.
How did you get into nursing? And how did end up in oncology and palliative care?
When I was 13, I went to the Downtown East Side [in Vancouver, Canada] and volunteered in a soup kitchen just for one night. There was a bit of a domino effect and I started volunteering in a soup kitchen in my community every week. Then I started volunteering a lot in the special needs community.
It basically showed me that I love caring for people. I didn't know much about nursing, but I thought I think that's what nurses do. I got into nursing school at UBC Okanagan right out of high school.
I had practicums in palliative care and I had a practicum in pediatric care. And what I loved about both those areas of practice is they felt very holistic. You really take the time to sit with families and get to know who the people you are caring for and meeting them where they're at.
And then my final practicum was in Ghana in West Africa where I focused mainly on pediatrics. There were a lot of really sick children – most with malaria or meningitis.
How long have you volunteered with Two Worlds Cancer?
I started sometime during the craziness of COVID-19. It was through Camara van Breemen [a nurse practitioner at Canuck Place and Two Worlds Cancer director]. I just approached her at work, we were both grabbing coffee at the same time, and I just said, “Can you tell me more about TWCC.”
What has your role evolved into with the Sunflower Children's Network?
I have been supporting the Project ECHO [online education] focussing on physicians, but now we've just received some funding [from the Centre for International Child Health through the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation] to focus more on nursing leadership.
Also, I teach the Pediatric Palliative Fellows about nursing – how to work with nurses and teach nurses. If they're building pediatric palliative care in their area, then they've got to teach nurses how to care for those kids too.
What is it about the Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration that attracted you?
I’ve volunteered in many things and what attracts me the most to an organization is when I feel like things that are talked about happen. TWCC is so active and everyone involved is so passionate. And I just love how motivated everybody is.
What was your impression of walking into the programs in Hyderabad, India?
I was thoroughly impressed by the team. I can see the impact that TWCC has made and also the connections. When I walked into the hospice and the hospitals it just felt like we were connected. We were colleagues right away.
You also spent time with the TWCC team collaborating with our partners in Nepal, what was that experience like?
We were at Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital and Kanti Children's Hospital, and then also at Hospice Nepal. I met some incredible healthcare workers, especially nurses who are very motivated and there for their patients.
They definitely are still new to both serious illness conversations with children and their families, and providing pain and symptom management to children. They actually deal with death very often there and yet they almost don't think that they are pediatric palliative care nurses, but they are.
At Kanti Children’s Hospital it is harder because there's two nurses for 40 children on their cancer unit. The nurses are interested in learning, but they are so busy. It'll take time for change to happen.
Is there a patient or family story that stays with you?
It's something that, Camara and Natasha [Dr. Natasha Dattoo, a TWCC volunteer] and I all experienced. We learned that at Kanti Children’s Hospital they are giving children ketamine for their lumbar punctures and bone marrow biopsies – both are anxiety and pain causing procedures. For children with cancer at BC Children's Hospital we have a procedure room where kids receive [ketamine for] sedation for these procedures, no matter what age.
We thought if they're giving Ketamine at Kanti then maybe they can do it at Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital too. Two days later Natasha and I taught the nurses how to give the medication – how fast to give it and what to monitor. They were able to get a child to have a bone marrow biopsy while under conscious sedation. The little boy didn’t remember any of it and he cried with happiness not pain.
Look what can be done when you actually go to visit. You can do a lot of teaching over an ECHO session but you really don't know what challenges they are working with until you go there.
Is there something that you saw or experienced in India and Nepal that made you feel that there's something that you can do better here in Canada?
Coming home you’re almost being overwhelmed by how much we have. So working with my hands and my heart and my brain, rather than all the equipment around me, is something that I bring home.
I think you learn to simplify things a little bit more in some ways, because I feel as a nurse in a high-resourced country sometimes we focus on the bells and the whistles, and the numbers, and sometimes we forget to just look at the children and talk to the families, and really hone in on what's going on.
It ignites my passion for sure.
It's a very intense the nursing that you do, how do you cope with the stress and demands of children’s cancer and palliative care?
What makes me be able to go to work every day is knowing that I might be able to walk a family through their journey and help them focus on just being there and loving their child, or having siblings feel somewhat normal during a very non-normal time.
I also feel with this work, I witness more love than most people on this planet. When you know that time is short people tend to focus on all the things that matter most.
Is there anything that you want to add?
It's about the culture in India and Nepal, but it relates back to palliative care in that people aren't as afraid to talk about death. The practice behind honouring children, honouring parents, and loved ones that they've lost is actually quite beautiful.
I think their conversations about grief and supporting their neighbours and their loved ones when people are grieving is far ahead of Canada.
What do you do when you turn your palliative care brain off?
I do live pretty big. I love to travel. And I love to ski, snowboard, and hike, go to the beach, and be with my friends. I live a pretty adventurous lifestyle because when I leave work I feel grateful to be healthy and able to do the things I do.
So having an amazing support system and having a lot of adventure in my life also keeps me healthy.