DeKalb teen honors late nurse who died from brain tumor

DeKALB - When recent DeKalb High School graduate Angelina Terry walked her neighbor, Karyn Petersen over to a fire hydrant near their homes Friday afternoon, Petersen wept.

Petersen’s tears, she said, were a mix of gratitude and grief. Gratitude that Terry, an aspiring nurse and artist, would paint the hydrant in honor of Karyn’s late daughter, Rachel Petersen, who died unexpectedly from a brain tumor days after her 25th birthday last September. And grief, that her daughter, a traveling nurse who’d worked the COVID-19 ward during the pandemic’s surges, was not here to witness it.

Karyn Petersen, of DeKalb, said she cried to see her neighbors honor her daughter, because “it just solidifies the amazing person that I always knew she was.”

“It’s very humbling for a mother’s heart to see the impact that [Rachel] had on others and on people’s lives,” Petersen said Friday through an emotional interview, where she testified in tears of her daughter’s work in the healthcare field, and of her bright spirit and generous nature.

“She was the daughter that everybody would have wanted to have, the friend that everybody wishes they were and had,” Petersen said. “And she was an amazing nurse.”

Newly graduated Angelina Terry, 18, knows of Rachel’s accolades herself. The teenager graduated a week ago from DeKalb High School (where Rachel was also an alumni) and plans to head off to the University of Illinois-Chicago to study pediatric nursing.

“I was inspired hearing [Rachel’s] stories,” Terry said. “How she was able to make bonds with her patients.”

‘That was Rachel’

The Terry family moved from Paw Paw to DeKalb when Angelina was in fourth grade and grew up next door to the Petersen family. Rachel frequently babysat Terry, and as the teen grew, they started having bonfires together and developed a sisterly friendship. When the 25-year-old died within days of doctors diagnosing her with a brain tumor last fall, Terry said she knew she wanted to do something.

“It was really a shock [when she died],” Terry said. “She was always so inspiring, super kind, very selfless, always giving back to people. And so was her family. Her family is just the best. So this fire hydrant is kind of a surprise.”

This week, she decided to participate in the City of DeKalb’s Paint-A-Plug program, a community initiative which invites people to claim a fire hydrant around town and paint it, adorn it with color and bring it to life.

On the grass between the Terry home and the Petersen home off of Settler Road and Horizon Lane sits the result: A white, blue and yellow fire hydrant painted with a Red Cross nurse symbol, an electrocardiogram heart scan with literal hearts, and sunflowers with the letter ‘R’ inscribed in the middle. They were Rachel’s favorite flowers, Terry said.

Terry, a member of the DeKalb High School Varsity Dance Team who spent her entire senior year in a pandemic, said the hydrant is also to honor healthcare workers across the spectrum, as well as frontline workers such as her dad, Robert Terry, a firefighter and paramedic with the DeKalb Fire Department. Her grandfather was also a firefighter.

It’s part of the reason she’s going into the field herself.

“It’s cool to be a part of something,” Terry said of the significance of entering the healthcare field in such a time. “It’s sad but cool to be part of history and experience everything and to be able to say ‘I helped out in this.’”

That can-do spirit is something she shares with Rachel, said Petersen.

When Rachel, who’d wanted to be a teacher initially, was a junior in high school, she came down with a mysterious illness which left her in and out of hospitals for nearly four months, her mom said. Doctors discovered a cyst on her tonsils, which were then removed, but Rachel later spiked a 103.8 degree fever which led to a diagnosis of infectious mononucleosis, or mono.

“During the time, there were no answers,” Petersen, who works in District 428, said. “They were throwing around the word leukemia.”

After that experience, Petersen’s daughter set her sites on a nursing career, and vowed to live in Colorado after falling in love with the Rocky Mountain views during a family hiking trip to Pikes Peak when she was 12.

Rachel graduated from Valparaiso University school of nursing, interviewed for a job in Colorado five days later, and was moved out west within five weeks, where she began her first two and a half years as a medical surge nurse at UC Health in Colorado.

“She was lucky enough to progress in her position there,” said Petersen. “And she earned an award from UC Health for outstanding team member. But she always had the travel bug.”

Rachel’s nomadic spirit eventually brought her back to the Midwest in October of 2019, where she began working as a travel nurse with a first stint at Northwestern Medicine hospital off Lake Shore Drive in Chicago.

In March of 2020, Rachel planned to move to California for another gig.

“Well, we know all what happened in March,” Petersen said. “So we had that discussion with her. She really wanted to go there but it probably wasn’t going to be the experience she was hoping for. Divine intervention, I don’t know, but she decided to stay here.”

Butterfly kisses

Rachel’s journey brought her instead to Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, where she worked on the COVID-19 ward, and had just completed her posting there when she began to experience debilitating headaches for weeks on end.

She’d been planning to next return to Colorado and work in pediatric oncology. On a Monday, she finished in Winfield, and on Friday, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

On Aug. 28, 2020, Rachel was in the emergency room at Edwards Hospital in Naperville (”The same hospital that I gave birth to her,” said Petersen) with stroke-like symptoms. She’d been vomiting and with headaches for days, getting tested for COVID-19 and awaiting results.

It was late that night. Doctors wanted to scan her chest. Petersen asked them to scan her daughter’s brain.

At 12:01 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 19, Rachel’s Dad, Bill Petersen, texted his daughter “Happy Birthday.” She was 25.

“Ten minutes later, the doctor came in and said ‘You have a four centimeter mass on your brain and a two point six centimeter mass on your breast. We’re admitting you and you’ll be having brain surgery tomorrow morning,’” recalled Petersen.

That Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2020 Rachel went in for a 10-and-a-half hour brain surgery. She was pronounced dead a week later.

“She kind of came back to us a little but not much,” her mom said.

Pausing to collect herself through tears, Petersen remembered a touching moment between father and daughter the day after surgery: A ritual the duo did since Rachel was small.

“Growing up, they used to do Eskimo and butterfly kisses,” Petersen said, describing how as Rachel grew she wanted to keep that tradition.

Father and daughter would touch noses three times, followed by three winks at each other.

As she lay in her hospital bed following the brain surgery, Rachel gave her dad one last butterfly kiss.

On Monday, Sept. 7, 2020, after a week of driving daily back and forth from DeKalb to Naperville since COVID-19 restrictions didn’t allow them to spend the night, the Petersens returned to the hospital to bad news: Rachel’s heart rate was up and they were going to send her for an MRI. On the way to the scan, her heart stopped beating.

“We had the doctors talk to us saying that she had a catastrophic event with her brain, and it was only a matter of time before she would pass,” Petersen said.

Rachel’s brothers rushed in to see their sister before she went -- Matthew Petersen, 24, from Austin and the youngest, AJ Petersen who was 21 at the time and going to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

“She was not verbal at all by 9 p.m. that evening,” Karyn Petersen said. “But we did have our moment of the five of us together, and we got to be together as a family for one more moment.”

The Petersens attempted to have Rachel’s organs donated, since she was a nurse and that’s what she would have wanted, her mom said. When they realized she was no longer a candidate, they attempted to have her body donated to science, but COVID-19 restrictions again barred their way.

Rachel Petersen died Sept. 8, not two weeks after her 25th birthday.

In memoriam

In the nine months since, the Petersens (and Terrys) have made it their mission to honor their daughter’s life and legacy as best they can.

Bill Petersen came up with the idea for a 5K Scrub Rub to raise funds in Rachel’s name. They’ve already set up scholarships: One for a graduated DeKalb High School senior, and another for a nursing student at Valparaiso University.

The first recipient of the $250 Rachel E. Petersen Memorial Scholarship for a DeKalb High senior? None other than Angelina Terry, not chosen but randomly selected, ironically, said Petersen, blindly by a committee of people not in the Petersen family.

“I remember at her funeral one of her friends told me she just gave her scarf to a homeless person in Chicago,” Terry said of Rachel. “She was always an amazing person and I wanted to be more like her.”

Petersen said if Rachel found out one of her patients was homeless, she would give out packets she made with water, granola bars and personal items before she let them be discharged.

The Petersens plan to award a $5,000 scholarship to a nursing college student annually, with a 10-year goal to fund a full semester for the student.

The first annual 5K Scrub Run is set for Sept. 11 at Hopkins Park in DeKalb. There will be virtual options for runners at Chi Omega Sorority where Rachel was a member at Valparaiso, and in Austin with her brother. Participants can sign up at www.5KScrubRun.org.

Through tears, Petersen gushed over Terry’s work of art, another piece of the plan to memorialize Rachel.

“I was overwhelmed,” Petersen said. “It was very touching because I see a lot of Rachel in her, and that is really kind of neat.”

Petersen, who credits her faith, friends and family for keeping her going, said it’s hard for her as a mother to formulate what she wants to remember most about Rachel.

“It was very hard for me about the organ donation [not working] because I prayed someone would get her eyes,” Petersen said. “The way that she looked at the world through her beautiful eyes, it was wonderment, love, it was do your best and help others be their best She embodied that. There’s that saying ‘Be the one who straightens the other one’s crown, but don’t let anyone know you did that.’ That was Rachel.”