The walk is a little different each day, sometimes a twisting, turning path through the various side streets of Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, and on other occasions more of a straight line down bustling thoroughfares.
One thing, though, remains consistent: no matter which route Paris Prinsen, 21, takes from her apartment to classes at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), she always passes both Dana-Farber and Boston Children’s Hospital — where she spent countless days and nights while undergoing treatment for stage IV neuroblastoma as a toddler and osteosarcoma as a middle-schooler.
This is not a coincidence. Rather than attend college closer to her family’s home in western Massachusetts, Paris chose to return to the same city and neighborhood where she endured the most trying times of her young life.
“I never got to experience Boston for what it actually was when growing up,” explains Paris, a senior at MCPHS. “Anytime I was driving into the city, it was under the duress of going to the hospital and getting treatment. I wanted to transform that, and change my perspective.”
Motivation, Paris says, is another factor. Seeing Dana-Farber and Boston Children’s twice a day reminds her both of where she’s been and where she hopes to go. After earning her degree in molecular biology in spring 2026, she has her sights set on medical school and a career as both a researcher and clinician, specializing in a field she already knows plenty about.
Paris wants to be a pediatric oncologist.
Growing up in treatment
Raised in a small, rural town near the Massachusetts-Connecticut border, Paris grew up in a home with a backyard that was once a cornfield and orchard. When, at 19 months old, she developed lumps on her abdomen, local doctors diagnosed it as a minor spider bite or rash. Her mother did not agree.
“Her magic mom powers told her it was something more serious, and insisted we get a second opinion,” recalls Paris. “That eventually led us to Boston Children’s Hospital, and she was right — it was a lot more serious.”
The cause was stage IV neuroblastoma, a cancerous tumor that had formed in her nerve tissue before birth and then spread from her abdomen to other areas. From 2005 to 2008, Paris would be in and out of the Childhood Solid Tumors Center at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and a stem cell transplant.
Paris and her mother, Andrea, relocated to Boston during this period, staying in housing for families dealing with serious medical conditions.
“She was forced to hit most of her milestones in a hospital environment,” Andrea Prinsen recalls. “Instead of growing up with children her age Paris grew up with her doctors and nurses, which she loved — and which led to her incredible ability to articulate herself with adults.”
Paris learned to read and write far earlier than her peers, and developed a fascination with medicine. Her parents credit Paris’ initial Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s care team – led by oncologists Cameron Trenor, MD, and Suzanne Shusterman, MD, and pediatric nurse practitioner Eileen Duffey-Lind, MSN, CPNP – for providing reassurance and giving the family confidence in an unknown future.
At age four, Paris went into remission. Despite lingering effects from treatment — including stunted growth, weakened hearing and reduced kidney function — she spent her elementary school years playing with classmates, her baby brother, Caden, and beloved cat, Oliver.
“The greatest quality that Paris showed during all of this treatment and everything that followed has to be the determination to keep going,” says Paris’ father, Ed. “Treatment was long, and very taxing on her, and she always pushed forward. ‘What’s next?’ was her attitude.”
Resilience and grace
Seven years later, as Paris prepared for middle school, came another devastating diagnosis. During a routine MRI, as part of her follow-up care, doctors discovered signs of osteosarcoma — a soft tissue cancer that typically forms in the growing bones of teenagers. In Paris’ case, it had developed in her ileum, the last portion of the small intestine, and formed a nickel-sized tumor in her left hip.
It was back to Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s, where oncologist Adam Durbin, MD, MPH, led Paris’ new care team as she started a chemotherapy protocol in fall 2015. After a severe bout of pneumonia and three-week intensive-care stay over the December holidays, Paris underwent limb-salvage surgery in late January 2016 to remove the affected bone and tissue containing the malignant tumor.
The procedure helped put her osteosarcoma into remission but her left leg was weakened. When Paris started middle school a week after finishing active treatment, she was bald, small for her age, and used a walker and wheelchair for mobility. Fitting in proved difficult, both there and in high school.
“I made some friends, but many kids were mean,” she recalls. “Because I was in a small town, my sense of self and identity was challenged. Everybody knew me as the cancer kid, so it was definitely hard to build myself away from that.”
Paris credits her Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s team for their support, inspiring her to begin mentoring other tweens and teens going through cancer treatment. She also focused on her studies, with her eye already on medical school, and her resilience paid off when she was accepted to MCPHS in spring 2022. That fall, she moved to Boston and started college.
“I have known Paris from her initial diagnosis and have followed her through her journey from active care to survivorship care,” says Duffey-Lind, who now treats Paris again along with other survivors of pediatric cancers in the David B. Perini Jr. Quality of Life Clinic at Dana-Farber. “She is truly a remarkable young woman with such resilience, strength and intelligence. Paris has fought her battle with these cancers with grace, positivity, and courage, and I know she will make a difference in this world.”
Equipped for what’s next
The bullying stopped in college, Paris says, but other challenges remain. Chronic fatigue requires careful scheduling, and neuropathy in her left leg often leaves it numb – turning even walks to class into a logistical adventure.
Then there is the awkwardness of feeling like she still does not fit in.
“I’m four foot seven and a half, so it’s very hard to walk around Boston, or campus, and not get stared at,” she says. “If I’m riding the T alone, people think I’m an unaccompanied minor. Once I was shadowing a doctor during an internship, and somebody said, “Oh, is it bring your daughter to work day?’”
With graduation approaching in spring 2026, Paris plans to begin sending out applications to medical school. Internships in labs and clinical areas at Dana-Farber and elsewhere, and leading the MCPHS chapter of Colleges Against Cancer, has her feeling ready for this next challenge.
“I want to use my experience to help others, to work with teenagers and kids going through that weird in-between phase of life in middle school,” says Paris. “My parents are concerned about the work, and the stress, and I know it won’t be easy. But I think I’d be the best equipped for handling stuff like that because I’ve been through it.”
Asked if she has a dream medical school, Paris smiles and mentions another place she routinely passes on her walks to and from classes.
“Many of my doctors went to Harvard Medical School, or did their fellowships there,” she says. “Obviously that’s everybody’s number-one choice, but it goes a little deeper for me.”