Here’s how Penn State swimmer Nikolette Nolte stays positive throughout cancer battle
On Thursday, Penn State swimmer Nikolette Nolte hit a slight bump on her road toward cancer remission.
The freshman, whose September diagnosis with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia inspired the viral social media campaign #NikiStrong, learned her upcoming bone marrow transplant would have to be rescheduled due to some irregular test results.
Yet Nolte, described by her teammates and coaches at Penn State as “a light,” was her same bubbly self Thursday evening as she spoke to reporters about where she is in her treatments.
“It definitely has been tough, to say the least, but my motto, dating back to my first diagnosis, has always been ‘positivity is the best medicine.’ I’ve always been a very bubbly person, and I think life is too short to live it in a negative way,” she said. “Even though it’s been a very trying time, I just want to take every day with everything I have because life is too short and anything can happen.”
Nolte knows that “anything can happen” more than most, thinking she had beaten cancer for good in 2017 while at Kutztown Area High School, signing her National Letter of Intent to swim for Penn State and starting her freshman year — only to have her future temporarily derailed with the news Sept. 21 that her cancer was back and this time in a different form.
Since her most recent diagnosis, Nolte spent an entire month at Lehigh Valley Hospital, going through a round of chemotherapy treatments. That was followed by a round of consolidation, which she described as weekly spinal taps, followed by another round of in-home chemo. After wrapping up chemo Nov. 19, Nolte said she’s been feeling stronger and her energy has returned
“I love to smile and laugh and it’s nice to have my family and friends there, especially on the tough days, because I do have my moments, but I like to smile and keep that positive attitude as much as I can because I do know that it also makes a huge difference in the outcome of treatment as well,” she said. ”So if I can be in control of that, I’m going to try everything in my best power to do that.”
The positivity Nolte maintains throughout the ups and downs of cancer treatment is evident not only in how it transfers onto those around her, but also in how she’s constantly looking for the good in all the worst situations.
With aspirations to go into the medical field, Nolte uses all her time spent at the Lehigh Valley Hospital and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia not as a setback, but as an opportunity to learn. She asks questions — not only about her own diagnosis and treatment, but about what’s going on behind the scenes and how her doctors and nurses first got inspired to enter their fields and how they knew what it was they wanted to do.
She’s also been using this experience as an opportunity to learn more about herself.
“I don’t want this to define me, because it’s just something that happened to me and I’m learning from it and I’m beating it — and that’s just how I want my story to go,” she said. “Once my transplant happens and I’m officially cancer free, it will just be a thing of the past, and something that taught me a lot.”
One of the things she says the experience has taught her is that she has a desire to give back to those who have helped her along her journey — from the doctors and nurses, to her friends, family, teammates and all who have posted #NikiStrong photos and videos to Twitter and Instagram — by helping others affected by pediatric cancer.
As a start, she wants to use her story and the social media attention to shed more light on pediatric cancer and its prevalence.
“I hope my story raises more awareness because a lot of people, I think, I know even for myself, see the commercials on TV and hear about people going through this, but you don’t really think about it until it happens to someone close to you, or in my case, it happened to me,” she said. “So I really just hope that it can bring more awareness because it unfortunately can happen to anyone at any time.”
The GoFundMe fundraising campaign set up by Penn State’s swimming and diving program to help Nolte’s family pay her medical bills is also donating portions of the money raised to Thon and the Jessie Reese Foundation, both organizations dedicated to supporting families of children dealing with pediatric cancer.
“I hope that my story is inspiring and helping people keep a positive attitude through any hard struggles they’re going through because you can come out on the other side and you can keep that attitude and mindset through tough times, too,” she said. “I’m hoping I can promote that.”
Though she’s still figuring out her future, she said she’s leaning toward pursuing a career in pediatrics so she can help children facing any sort of medical challenges.
As for her own medical challenges, Nolte said she’s going to remain positive until the day comes when she can get her bone marrow transplant from her sister Krystal, 20, who is a perfect match.
When she goes for her surgery, she plans to print and cut out some of the many #NikiStrong photos posted by Olympic athletes, swim teams across the country and almost every Penn State sports team, and take them with her to decorate her recovery room.
Unsurprisingly, Nolte found a way to put a positive spin on her surgery getting delayed — she now has more time to finish printing out all of those photos.
This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 10:17 PM.