Frances Marie Paul, patient advocate

FRANNY PAUL was a patient at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, walking the hall to get a little exercise, pushing her IV pole ahead of her, when she saw behavior that she absolutely couldn't tolerate.

There were doctors going into a patient's room and not wearing sterilized gowns.

"You're putting your patient at risk," she snapped at them. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

That was Franny. When it came to knowing what was right and what was wrong, she pulled no punches, not even when she herself was a cancer patient fighting for her life.

Franny was director of patient safety at the Cooper Health Care Network in South Jersey and she knew what she was talking about.

The incident at Sloan-Kettering was not her only confrontation with the medical hiearchy. Never intimidated by doctors or anyone else, she didn't hesitate to get into the faces of those she thought were breaking rules that jeopardized patients.

Frances Marie Paul, a registered nurse who spent years as a bedside nurse before going into management, a flight nurse in the Air Force Reserves and a woman with such a rich sense of humor she could make people laugh until they ached, died of cancer Tuesday after a ferocious two-year battle with the disease. She was 50 and lived in Collingswood, N.J.

"She was really funny," said her sister Ronnie Polaneczky, a Daily News columnist. "She was an excellent mimic. She would make up characters and do ad-lib monologues. She could tell a story better than anyone."

Shortly before she died, Fran was tethered to an oxygen tank. Just for laughs, she pretended to be smoking a cigarette - strictly forbidden around oxygen - and pretended to put it out on the tank.

That was just like Fran. "She could find the absurd in any situation," Ronnie said.

As a nursing student at Chestnut Hill Hospital, she was in attendance while a doctor was repairing a patient's nose. After he finished the procedure, Fran, who was at the patient's feet, could see that the nose was crooked.

She had the temerity to point this out to the doctor, shocking everyone in attendance. Who was this student nurse with such effrontery?

But the doctor took a look from Fran's angle and agreed. The nose was crooked. He fixed it.

"She knew at that moment that she would always be a patient advocate," Ronnie said.

Frances was born in Philadelphia the fifth of the nine children of Aloysius and Pat Polaneczky. She graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School and went on to the Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing. She received a bachelor's degree in nursing from Gwynedd-Mercy College in 1998. She was a member of the Alpha Sigma Lambda National Honor Society.

Fran worked as a bedside nurse at Albert Einstein Medical Center, where she also worked in disaster preparedness and critical care. She went to Cooper Medical Center in '06 and remained in patient safety until she became ill.

She met her husband, Adam Paul, a 20-year Air Force career man, in an incident that was probably typical of her. She was a nurse and an officer at McGuire Air Force Base when she spotted an enlisted man who was out of uniform.

Adam was a loadmaster, which means he oversaw the loading of cargo planes, and his name tag wasn't showing.

"Who's this nurse giving me a hard time?" he recalled thinking. "But she was joking about it. I took her out to dinner that night."

They were married in August 1989 in Hilton Head, S.C.

"She was a go-getter," Adam said. "If she was on a committee, she would be running it. Every project she undertook, she would attack it with both barrels blazing."

As a flight nurse, Fran would take one or two flights overseas a month to bring patients back to McGuire. She would treat the patients on the plane. She left the Reserves in '03 with the rank of captain. Adam left the service in '05 with the rank of staff sergeant, and went into construction.

"She was larger than life," said her sister, Rosemary Jenkins. "She was our moral compass. She had a kind and generous spirit. If she had a hundred dollars, she would drop forty of it in a homeless man's cup.

"She could imitate Cher better than Cher. She would put on a lounge act that was hysterical. She would sing, snap her fingers, talk to the band. She made up these crazy characters.

"Somebody once said to me, 'I wish I was a Polaneczky. You people have so much fun.' "

Another sister, Peggy Polaneczky, a gynecologist at Cornell, said Fran was an "incredible mix. She mixed her humor with her responsibility for others. She was a true patient advocate. She pulled no punches. She would be right in your face."

"She was trained as an old-time nurse," Peg said. "In her day, nurse trainees lived in dormitories in the hospital. She was part of the last great generation of nurses."

Fran was a talented seamstress who made dresses for her nieces, and crocheted blankets for family members.

"If she met a woman and found out she was going to have a baby, she would make her a blanket," Ronnie said.

It seemed that everyone in the family, as well as many friends, had stories about how Fran was always available to help anyone who needed her.

"You could call her at 4 in the morning and she would be there for you," Ronnie said. "She was an unbelievable friend to everyone."

Fran is also survived by two sons, Henry and Sam; two other sisters, MaryLou Rittenhouse and Pat Federowic, and three brothers, Aloysius Jr., Mike and Joe Polaneczky, and her father.

Services: Memorial service 11 a.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church, 201 Dayton Ave., Collingswood, N.J. Friends may call at 6 p.m. Friday at the Blake and Doyle Funeral Home 226 W. Collings Ave., Collingswood, N.J., and at 9 a.m. at the church.