Nick’s Dream Party Was Held as Scheduled

ORANGE —  About two months before Nick Profeta was to turn 7, he began planning in elaborate detail his idea of the perfect birthday party.

Nick, suffering from a rare form of cystic fibrosis, spent most of his time at the hospital, so it was his nurse, Stephanie Frost, who talked with him at length, day after day, about what the party would be like. He decided there would be lots of decorations, games, T-bone steaks and vanilla cake.

But three weeks before his birthday, Nick, who had waged a lifelong battle against his disease, died of cardiac arrest.

Still, on Nov. 18, Nick’s seventh birthday, a party was thrown in his honor. Frost, after finishing her work day at Childrens Hospital of Orange County, threw the party at her house, inviting Nick’s parents, Peggy and Rip. The place was decorated just as the boy had envisioned, including a table centerpiece of a dog constructed of carnations--Nick loved dogs--and the guests played games and ate thick, juicy T-bone steaks and slices of vanilla cake.

For the family, the party was therapy.

“Steph has a very rare quality about her,” Peggy Profeta said. “She’s just incredible.”

Frost, 32, who for nine years has worked as a nurse at the children’s hospital in Orange, routinely handles a caseload of seven to 15 young patients like Nick, each of whom she says requires that she immerse herself in the lives of the children and their families. She typically works her usual shift at the hospital and then remains on emergency call for each of her patients.

And for children suffering from cystic fibrosis and similar disorders, emergencies can occur frequently.

Additionally, Frost volunteers much of what is left of her spare time as a director organizing annual cystic fibrosis camps, in which Orange County children with the disease are able to escape for a weeklong retreat at no cost to their families.

She has taken a similar interest in helping coordinate events for the local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation. As a sufferer herself of rheumatoid arthritis, Frost said she has an insight into the ailment that helps her relate better to the children.

But neither arthritis nor her chronic asthma flare-ups, nor the pain of losing some children to whom she had grown close, has dampened her passion for her work.

“I don’t know how she does it, especially with her own (ailments) and all,” Peggy Profeta said. “ . . . She’s Mary Poppins. She comes and takes care of every little child, and then flies on to the next one.”