Cheerleader hangs up pom-poms to help kids
INDIANAPOLIS, IN - The nurses were like angels.
Lauren Madden noticed that about them. Their goodness and their gentle, kind spirits.
She noticed the angels because they really didn't belong where she was — going through hell.
It was five years ago, when Madden was working in a mortgage department, a cheerleader for the Indianapolis Colts — and her father was diagnosed with aggressive duodenal cancer. Six months later, her mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
These two medical professionals from Greenwood — her dad, Tom Madden, an ER doctor; her mom, Terri, a surgical tech — found themselves in hospital beds, needing someone to take care of them.
And as Lauren Madden sat there, she saw the nurses care for the two people who meant the most to her in the world.
"I was just like, 'Lauren what are you doing with your life? This is what you need to be doing,' " said Madden, who had graduated from Ball State University with a telecommunications major in 2010. "'This is what you were called to do.'"
She immediately applied to nursing school.
Terri Madden, now cancer free, got to see her daughter graduate as a registered nurse in 2014. Tom Madden didn't. He didn't get to see her following in his footsteps, in an ER department. He died four years ago on Aug. 8.
"I go into work every day and think about him," said Madden, 29, a registered nurse at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. "Sometimes I’ll be at work and I’ll think, 'Oh I wish I could tell my dad that, this funny story, or what would my dad do in this situation?' "
As Madden tries to carry on the legacy of her dad, she's made her own sacrifice.
After five seasons as a Colts cheerleader, she put away her boots. Working 12-hour shifts, caring for sick children is her focus now.
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