National Nurses Week: 50-year dream of becoming a nurse comes true!
Houston - A local woman's five-decade-long dream to become a nurse finally comes true! One thing after another stopped Rhonda Trotter from her ideal career, but finally, she's a registered nurse! Now she's cherishing being appreciated during this National Nurses Week. She has been dreaming about it since kindergarten.
"I was the one when anyone hurt themselves playground or when we were playing, I would always say, 'Let me look at it, let me see’. I would just doctor on the cats, the dogs, or any opportunity that I got to see if I could help someone or something to get better," says Rhonda.
She wanted to start nursing school after high school but had to delay it.
"I was a teenage mom for one, when I was 16, so that created some challenges. Graduating high school, I wanted to go into nursing, but my mom said, 'No, you're going to go for computers. Computers are the future. So, I began a process of that and going through the University of Houston with computer science," says Rhonda. But she says she just couldn't connect with it. "I decided okay, I'm going to go ahead and take my classes towards my nursing, which I did, and my parents were pretty much you're on your own. So, I had to work and go to school, and it was just start and stop and take a class here and there, when it was economically feasible for me," explains Rhonda.
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It took years for Rhonda to work and put herself through school. Then, her parents were both diagnosed with cancer, just a few weeks apart, so she took some time off to help care for them. She was devastated to find out she didn't meet the deadline for her classes to count.
"Once I started back, the classes were too old. So, I had to start over, take classes over but I always knew that that's what I wanted to do. That's where my passion was, and I was just taught to just keep going. You never quit and with my faith in God, I just decided okay, I'm going to keep going," explains Rhonda.
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Rhonda now works at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital with the same medical team who cared for her parents. Rhonda's mom got to personally experience her nurturing soul, when she was fighting cancer, which changed her mind about her daughter's future.
"She passed actually two months before I began a nursing program. So, she was aware that I was making preparation, and she was very happy to know that I was going to be a professional nurse, because I had helped in the journey taking care of them (her mom and dad). Now I'm working with their doctors and nurses. It's amazing," says a smiling Rhonda.
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Rhonda is living her dream and so happy to be working at a hospital that personally means so much to her.
"It's very rewarding to me! Some mornings when driving to work, I travel the same path that I did in my other career and it's just very rewarding to me. I tear-up some mornings, just thinking I actually got a chance to live to do what I really wanted to do. I feel very blessed to be here at Memorial Hermann, where I have so many years of history and a long relationship. I've been blessed to work with some amazing nurses that have just really lobbied around me, and they have helped me develop my skills. I can share with some of the patients because I've walked a mile in their shoes, since my parents were actually here," says Rhonda, the accomplished nurse.