I Didn’t Want To Be a Nurse

It is hard to believe that after being a nurse for 18 years, longer than the time that I worked in the broadcasting industry as a TV reporter, producer, and anchor, I am able to say that. But it is true; nursing was far from what I had wanted to pursue as a career.

As a young girl, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut (who didn’t?), perhaps owing to the time when there was this battle to dominate space (think USSR vs. the US). Then, I watched this movie with my dad about a Filipino priest who turned into a Communist rebel. In that movie, there was a journalist and I fell in love with the idea of writing for a living, going out there, venturing into the unknown, speaking and talking to people. From then on, I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a journalist and fast-forward to a decade or so later, I graduated with a degree in Mass Communications, working for ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation for 9 years.

There I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the country and the places regular people did not dare go.

I was the first TV reporter to have covered the first public appearance of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Leader, Hashim Salamat (google him if you don’t know who he is). I covered wars in the Southern and Central Mindanao between Muslim rebels and the Armed Forces. I’ve made wonderful connections with Presidents’ men (once I even knew our President’s itinerary during a visit, which helped tell my news crew where to go), people in power, and individuals with influence. I’ve dodged bullets (imagine me hiding behind a tree and if I hadn’t moved behind that tree, I would’ve been hit by bullets that landed in front of that tree) and had been one of the victims when our company vehicle was ambushed.

It was a life I didn’t think I would ever abandon. It was fun and adrenaline-pumped.

But life has its way of throwing you that curveball.

We arrived in the US. Without a job except for babysitting and house-cleaning gigs here and there, we thought there had to be another option.

So nursing entered the scene. Three and a half years and it took me to a Surgical Step-Down floor and then the Emergency Department in one of New York City’s biggest hospital systems to the Radiology Department in one of world’s most prominent hospitals based in the Bay Area. It was a different world, far from what I was accustomed. But what does a person do? That person learns to thrive. And it was not easy. Challenges faced me, from culture-shock to bullying to learning how to start all over again.

In hindsight, it is funny to think I didn’t want to be a nurse. But you know what, I believe there is a reason for everything. That I would not have appreciated the same experience that I’ve had and continue to have had I been a nurse earlier on in life. I would not have realized that something as simple as holding someone’s hand can make a difference or that, in my spare time, I can still write and finish a novel, which isn’t exactly far from my first love, which is writing.

Suffice it to say, nursing as a profession offers an array of potentials unimaginable and I am in gratitude for the chance I have been given in life to experience what it has to offer.