Staff and family gathered last week in Ferko Park, near the hospital, to release four white doves and add five Japanese Stewartia trees - one extra in case there's vandalism - to what's become known as Survivor Grove.
In all, 17 young trees have been planted in patients' honor among the park's decades-old London planes and sky-high tulip poplars. Stewartia was chosen this year because "it's such an elegant tree, and special people deserve special trees," said Brian Cox, landscape architect for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, who designed the grove.
At the foot of one of the Stewartias, which sport creamy white blossoms in June and purplish-bronze leaves in fall, Thrush vowed to bury her driver's license photo. It was taken during a brutal post-mastectomy, chemotherapy regimen that made all her hair fall out in a single day.
"I looked like a plucked chicken," she said, "eyelashes, eyebrows, the works."
The Illinois-based Cancer Treatment Centers of America operates four for-profit hospitals across the country, including the facility at 1331 E. Wyoming Ave. This is the former Parkview Hospital, which CTCA bought, renovated, and opened in December 2005.
Technically, it doesn't have five-year cancer survivors yet; those being honored started their treatment at another hospital. Thrush was first treated at the CTCA in Zion, Ill.
Cancer has not been her only medical issue. At 29, she got a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a progressive illness that affects breathing. She also has asthma.
Both conditions, she said, are better for the holistic treatment she received at CTCA.
