Hawaii Nurse, Waka Waka Lua!

With a young friend in Esteli, Nicaragua

My name is Alex. I am a 27 year old ICU nurse, and recently moved back to Baltimore with John and Merrill (the ‘rents). I was born in North Carolina, but grew up here in “Bawlmer”, including graduating from Villa Julie College of Nursing (AKA Stevenson University). For the past 4 years working as a travel nurse. My work has taken me to NYC (Bellvue Hospital) , Hawaii, San Francisco, and most recently, San Diego. I went on my first of several missions with Operation Rainbow to Nicaragua, 11 years ago. I started as a young “helper”, then in subsequent years, as a nursing student, and finally as a full-fledged RN.  My earliest memory of mission work was greeting my dad coming home after his first mission to Nicaragua in 1998. His team was caught in Hurricane MItch, and stranded for a week. By the time they arrived home, the news media was staked out at the airport covering the return. That was pretty exciting for me to see. My mom also went on several missions to places that made the Top Ten Travel Warning List of the State Department, including Pakistan after an earthquake, Sri Lanka after a Tsunami, and Haiti, two weeks after the earthquake. Some how, my parents decided that these missions were safe enough for my little sisters and me. Throughout the years, all of us have joined my parents on these mission trips, usually to Nicaragua, though my little sister Brittany was with our parents at Adventiste in Haiti last year.  Our friends didn’t quite understand it when I showed them pictures from our trips. 

Administering an IV in Nicaragua

They thought that when we went to the tropics, we must have been going to fancy resorts!  In any case, these were the most special experiences in my life, and they helped to cement my decision to become a nurse.  In fact, it was on a Rainbow mission in 2006 when I began my passage into professionalism, learning I had learned enough to pass two things:  my first Foley catheter and the NCLEX (waiting desperately for my test score results to download in the painfully slow dial-up internet cafe in Esteli).

 

Waiting for a fake wave in Singapore.

During the past few years I’ve enjoyed practicing in a different kind of tropics: the Aloha state of Hawaii, as a traveling nurse.  I feel extremely lucky and excited to join the team this year on the mission to Haiti.

Real waves, Kailua Beach, Oahu

Climbing in Hawaii