Diagnosed with an incurable brain cancer, Joanne Berg is preparing to graduate with her BSN and go on to teach the next generation of nurses
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| Joanne Berg (right) poses with Clara Marchese, clinical associate professor of nursing at Nazareth University and president of Nazareth’s Pi Psi Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International, the honor society of nursing, at the November 2026 ceremony where Berg was inducted into the honor society. |
In six years as a registered nurse, Joanne Berg has always tried to provide the kind of care she would want if she or any of her loved ones were the patient. In 2023, she became a patient, diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and facing radiation, chemotherapy, and scans every three months to check for growth.
And yet before finishing treatment, she enrolled at Nazareth University to complete her bachelor’s degree in nursing, building on her two-year RN degree. After her December 2026 graduation, she plans to pursue a Master of Science in nursing education so she can train nurses to provide excellent care.
“There’s a country song, Live Like You Were Dying,” says Berg. “Shouldn’t everybody be?”
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| Joanne Berg keeps this photo where she can see it every day: It’s her at age 6, climbing from the neighbor’s yard into their own, instead of walking around. “I was and have always been determined and courageous and continue to challenge obstacles in my way,” she says. |
A long way around to Nazareth
Berg’s path to Nazareth began in 1991, when she toured campus with her father, hoping to study music therapy. But she was waitlisted at Nazareth. At the suggestion of a piano mentor, she went to college in North Dakota and trained to become a music teacher. She later earned a liberal arts degree, raised children, taught private music lessons in daycares and preschools, taught parent-child education classes for Hillside Children’s Center, and managed a not-for-profit afterschool support program in Greece, New York.
Nursing was in her family. Her grandmother was a lifelong LPN, and it came naturally to Berg. After a hockey accident on her cul-de-sac, Berg grabbed her first aid kit and got the injured child and his mother to the hospital. “I wasn’t afraid of any of it. Helping came naturally to me,” she says.
While working at Hillside Children’s Center, she decided to make nursing her career. She earned her RN at Monroe Community College in 2020, juggling schoolwork, overnight shifts in Hillside’s residential cottages for children and in a nursing office, while raising her children. ”It was exhausting, but I have always been very goal-driven,” she says.
When the pandemic began, she took her final exams remotely from her kitchen table. She soon began working on a hospital unit caring for patients with cardiac problems, serious illnesses, or who were on ventilators, before starting a stint as a travel nurse in 2021.
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| Joanne Berg assisted Marie Bell, associate professor of nursing at Nazareth University, in guiding her Nursing Fundamentals course students during their clinical hours at Highland Hospital. “Working with her is something I will always cherish. She had a way of making me feel even more confident in teaching nursing students,” says Berg. |
An unexpected patient
In 2023, Berg began having dizzy spells and episodes of tingling. As a nurse, she knew how to advocate for herself, and she pushed for an MRI. Within days, she learned she had a tumor in the left temporal lobe of her brain, too risky to remove because surgery could affect her speech and movement. For a singer and someone who loves to share her stories, that was especially hard to hear.
Surgery was done only to obtain tissue for testing. Additional pathology showed the tumor was a glioblastoma, an aggressive cancer with no cure. Berg sees a silver lining in that: That diagnosis made her eligible for clinical studies. She went on to complete 33 radiation treatments and months of oral chemotherapy.
Before her first radiation session, strapped to the table in a mask molded to her face, the technicians noticed tiny, star-like particles around her. “The technicians said it was like everybody who loves you was with you and surrounding you,” Berg says, “It was really empowering.” She also drew on her faith for support and hope.
She drove home from radiation treatments listening and dancing to Stevie Wonder songs like “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing,” with the top open on her Bronco.
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| Berg drove home from radiation treatments dancing to music with the top open on her Bronco. |
She met hard moments with humor. When her daughter photographed her the summer of her surgery, they called the shaved-hair look Craniotomy Queen Barbie.
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| To find some humor in a hard time, Joanne Berg and her daughter reinterpreted a diagnostic surgery photo of Berg to look like a poster for the popular Barbie movie. |
Today, while still facing the “scanxiety” of ongoing imaging checks and waiting for results, her scans are stable, and her care team says she can call it remission. “I like that word,” she says. “I think it gives you more hope.”
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| Soon after completing treatment, Berg helps her daughter, Amanda Pietruszewski, with her dress at the daughter’s wedding in October 2024. |
Caring differently
Berg’s illness changed how she practices nursing. Today she works per diem as an on-call nurse at a nearby hospice home, where she cares for people in their final days. “I treat them like they’re more precious than gold,” she says. “Like their story matters.” She sits with patients and captures their stories, so they know they made an impact one last time.
“Human kindness and joy are more of the treatment than the medication,” she says.
She also tutors nursing students at Monroe Community College and teaches CPR and life-support classes in the community.
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| Travel nursing took her to the oncology unit at Upstate Hospital in Syracuse, New York, in April 2023. “I loved working with those patients. I worked nights and was able to make sure they were comfortable, that they could rest,” says Berg. |
Mistaken for a professor
In New York state, nurses with two-year degrees are required to complete a bachelor’s degree within 10 years. Berg tried an online program, but it didn’t work well. A former professor of hers at MCC encouraged her to go to Nazareth.
At Nazareth, Berg, who’s 52, is often mistaken for faculty or staff. Many of her classmates are her children’s ages. She makes a point of talking to students who seem to be on their own, often with humor and sometimes with candy.
Faculty members who learn her story and see how she’s pursuing her goals often ask how she does it all.
“Why wouldn’t I do that?” she tells them. “I’m not going to wake up every day and think about my potential death.”
She credits Nazareth’s faculty and staff with supporting her from the start. When nursing professor Bonnie Walden commented that Berg doesn’t have a crystal ball to know the future, Berg pointed out, "Do any of us?”
What’s next
Berg, who was inducted into Nazareth’s chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International honor society of nursing in November, will celebrate her nurse pinning ceremony in December, then begin her master’s in nursing education at Roberts Wesleyan University in March. She wants to teach future nurses something she fears can suffer in a world of screens and online learning: the value of sitting at the bedside, listening, and reflecting.
Her message to anyone facing a challenge is simple. “Don’t let whatever it is define you.” She mentions a friend whose husband had a stroke and uses a wheelchair. They still go dancing. “Just don’t give up.”
