Brevard County woman crafts lap blankets for cancer patients in memory of her late mother
By Gail Paschall-Brown
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PALM BAY, Florida (WESH) — A Melbourne woman is hand-knitting some lap blankets for patients at a cancer care center, and it’s all in memory of a loved one.
“If I sit here, right, these lap blankets I can get done in like two hours,” Nicole Flickinger said.
Flickinger, who lives in Melbourne, works full time from home, and in her spare time, she’s making lap blankets for patients receiving treatment at Cancer Care Centers of Brevard in Palm Bay.
When asked why she’s doing this, Flickinger said, “For my mom.”
Her mother, Marie, died of blood cancer when Flickinger was just a teenager. She makes the blankets in memory and in honor of her.
“She had died when I was 15, and I went into the medical field, and one of my jobs is that I worked in oncology in Indiana, and I had seen where the patients were there they were bringing blankets,” Flickinger said.
She says the treatment rooms are cold, so if patients are getting blood transfusions or chemotherapy, they have something made with love to keep them warm.
There are 20 treatment chairs at the Palm Bay location.
Flickinger made 11 blankets in about four weeks with little hearts and clips, which show they’re handmade.
“If I could be there, I would,” Flickinger said.
Flickinger has nine more to go, and then she’s finished. She plans to deliver them on Monday to the Cancer Care Center of Brevard.
“It’s something that means a lot, so I’ll start out down there, and then I’ll work my way up from there maybe, I’ll go to all the cancer centers, who knows,” Flickinger said.
Flickinger pays for all the materials herself and she’s making the blankets while she is undergoing testing to see whether or not she has the same condition as her mother.
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