Nurse has healing touch for cancer patients

She never let it affect her, but Joyce Wong was nonetheless well aware of all the sideways glances she elicited as she strode the halls of the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children with her small clutch of volunteers and her old-school boombox stereo.

She understood, too. Wong was in the early stages of introducing healing touch and reiki therapies as part of a holistic approach to treating children with cancer. Despite growing awareness and acceptance of so-called alternative care practices, Wong knew her project bore the whiff of the exotic to colleagues indoctrinated into hard science and philosophy of Western medicine.

“When we first started, it was seen as odd,” Wong recalled. “People looked at us from the corner of their eyes.”

But if her colleagues were at times skeptical, they were also deferential to Wong’s standing as a senior nurse with more than a quarter-century of experience in the pediatric oncology ward and a person with an unimpeachable personal testimony of the efficacy of nontraditional therapies. They knew from whence she preached.

In the years since, Wong’s efforts have led to the establishment of a holistic healing program that has transformed what it means to provide care to people living with cancer. When Wong retires this summer, she will do so secure in the knowledge that her championing of holistic approaches to treatment has touched the lives of thousands of women and children.

Wong, 71, was born and raised in St. Louis. Her father worked at a dairy, and her mother sold Avon products and worked in restaurants, bakeries and a bra factory before settling in as a stay-at-home mom for Wong and her three siblings.

When Wong was a sophomore in high school, one of her friends was stricken with appendicitis. Wong went to St. Alexius Hospital to visit her and was taken with the clinical surroundings.

“I also thought the nurses’ uniforms were really cute,” she said, laughing.

Wong would end up enrolling in the Lutheran School of Nursing, a department within St. Alexius, after graduation.

The first semester was difficult, and Wong said she had to bear down on her studies to keep from joining the roughly one-half of her class who failed to advance past the first year. But once her training shifted from the classroom to the hospital floor, Wong found that she had the qualities necessary to succeed as a nurse.

While at college, Wong went on a blind date with a young man from Hawaii. Wong already had come to think of boys from Hawaii as “nice and congenial,” and Glenn Wong was no exception. Friendship bloomed, then love and marriage.

After graduation the couple moved to Baltimore, where Joyce Wong got her first experiences in working with children with cancer. In 1970 they relocated to Honolulu.

As a certified pediatric oncology nurse, Wong finds optimism and uplift in an area of health care that might seem unlikely to those on the outside.

“These children get the diagnosis (of cancer) and they become fighters,” Wong said. “They have great outlooks, and they don’t let things bother them. They’re wise beyond their years.”

Wong allows that her own natural optimism and positivity are a good fit for the type of work she does.

“It takes a certain type of person,” she said. “My friends say I’m an eternal optimist, but I get to laugh and play with the patients and I understand when they’re fussy or they aren’t feeling right. The hope grows as you work within the profession — it gets deeper. You see what they go through, and you go through it with them.”

In 1996 Wong herself was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She spent a year away from work to undergo chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.

While in treatment at The Queen’s Medical Center, Wong was able to receive healing-touch treatment.

“It was the only thing that allowed me to sleep and rest and heal,” Wong said. “When I went back to work, I wanted to bring it back to Kapiolani with me.”

And so Wong researched the practice and drew up a proposal to implement it for her pediatric oncology patients. She got certified in healing touch in 2000, and with the help of dedicated volunteers — and that boombox for gentle musical accompaniment — established a program that now also includes reiki, yoga, aromatherapy, meditation and other healing arts. The program is available for all pediatric patients and has more recently expanded to women in treatment.

Wong’s efforts to promote holistic health were cited in her 2014 recognition as national certified pediatric oncology nurse of the year.

Wong said she is grateful to Kapiolani for giving her the opportunity and the support necessary to realize her vision for a comprehensive holistic health program.

And as her time at the medical center comes to a close, she said she is looking forward to spending her retirement years watching her grandchildren and touring the national parks with her recently retired husband.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@staradvertiser.com.