As her alter ego Mollypenny the clown, nurse Ruth Cull has spent two decades bringing joy to sick children at an Ottawa hospital, while helping them process what they're going through.
As her alter ego Mollypenny the clown, nurse Ruth Cull has spent two decades bringing joy to sick children at an Ottawa hospital, while helping them process what they're going through.
Matt Galloway. The child, perhaps believing the tests contained the cancer itself, insisted on having the report returned to him, so he could send it away."We went on to an undisclosed location … and he launched it by balloons, and so there it went," she said. "I think now he might be 24, 25 [years old]."Cull started work as an operating room nurse at CHEO in 1974. When she retired from those duties, she took on the role of Mollypenny in 2001. She will retire on Oct. 31.
"I'd go in and I'd just sit there sometimes, and Brenda, [a nurse,] would come in later and she says, 'Is this clown bothering you?'" Cull said. That included "giving them the option to tell me to leave if they want, because they have no control within the hospital setting," she said.