Monday, December 5^th, 2022

I spent the first week of employment within my patient’s home. By December 2022, we went into Whitney Young High School. The last time I was here I was 17 years old and I was inducted into the National Honors Society. We had to participate in the Special Olympics. The Special Olympics was held at Whitney Young High School. I personally loved every minute of it. I knew even then I wanted to become a nurse, but the staff having observed my interaction with the patients/students felt I would be a good fit and said, “You know you’re really good at this. You should consider getting a job here.”  

I was too young to know how to ask more questions. I also knew I wanted to be a writer even since I was a child. I had healthcare workers in my family who regaled me with stories about their job when they came home. They also read books and gifted them to me when they were done reading them. One of those books was Coma by Robin Cook. I was mesmerized with the idea that you could be a healthcare worker and writer at the same time. My parents took me into bookstores, patted the countertop and said, “Get whatever you want,” and purchased the books I chose. One of my family members even made her place in Chicago crime history as a nurse. Not because she committed a crime, but she worked as a nurse in areas of Chicago where famous crimes that were made into Discovery Investigation profiles many years later. My interest in healthcare and storytelling was initiated and there was no turning back.

Learning begins at home. 

Returning to Whitney Young High School as a one-to-one nurse to my patient, I realized that you didn’t need to be a student to deeply appreciate the school and even help the students. Whitney Young High School actually looked much the same as it did when I was in high school and there were even more pictures and memorabilia of their famous alumni hanging from the walls. A feeling of familiarity overtook me.

Somehow or another, it seemed like I had come full circle into something, but I didn’t know what.  

Saturday, October 22^nd, 2022, 2 pm

I met with my new patient and family today. The family speaks four languages in their home. My new patient’s family have gone out of their way to make the bedroom as homelike and inviting as possible with nature scenes painted on the walls and paintings from local and international artists offering well wishes for my patient’s continued good health and recovery.

“We try to keep things as normal as possible,” his parents said.

My new patient’s parents have heard since he was born that he was supposed to die by the age of 5. Their son has turned 13 and they are super grateful. I’ve seen and heard these types of stories having worked in nursing at that time for 21 years. The truth of the matter is that the only one who knows your beginning and end is God. Patients and cases like this are fun for nurses like me because we get to prove the doctors wrong.

 “What school will he attend?” I asked.

“Whitney Young High School,” his mother replied.

With all due respect to the famous alumni, but everyone in Chicago always knew that Whitney Young High School is da bomb diggity!  Whitney Young High School was great before these individuals became students there. It just got better when the alumni arrived and even better after they left to do great things.

The plan for me before I went to high school was for me to attend Whitney Young High School, but my family moved and I attended high school elsewhere. All my life, it was in the back of my mind, “How might my life have been different had I attended Whitney Young High School?”

Sniffle. . .  Pass the tissue. . .

It was one of those things that I would rehash in the middle of the night or when I awakened to face the day. And exactly how many people get a chance to do high school all over again without having your parents to yell at you about having to do your homework?

Taking this job meant listening to the urging of my heart and my spirit.

“I will be your child’s nurse,” I told them.