eileen higgins

Returning to finish my under graduate nursing degree has been a longer and more circuitous route than I first anticipated at the beginning of my nursing career. All experiences added to the person and professional RN I am today. Some, I could not really wish upon others to experience. I had always wanted to become a nurse. Higher education was not possible at the time I finished high school even though taking all college prep classes would have enabled to do so, if possible. That was not the choice, at that time. Business classes/secretarial skills were acquired to then have me enter the business world for a time before marriage and motherhood. When my own children were getting ready for their college years, a strong and long-held yearning finally propelled me to enter nursing school as an adult learner. Completing an associates degree in nursing enabled me to enter a job market then because I was now the sole bread winner for my family.
Fifteen years would pass before surviving spouse veteran's benefits were awarded plus some other delays, which helped enable me to return to do a degree completion which is almost finished and the desire to now possibly attempt grad school.
Some the the "delays" encountered to this point were both family and my personal health experiences: my ruptured appendix with peritonitis (where I made a pact with my God to get me through this and I would do nursing school--somehow/some way); an auto accident with a head trauma; a stroke with a speech injury; cancer and subsequent death of a spouse. Some of these experiences I would not have chosen. But, yes, all contributed to the person/woman/sister/mother/friend/wife/nurse I am today. Looking back at some of those hold ups, while not exactly joyful times, they were periods of extraordinary learning and growth leading me to be thankful to those events that molded the "me" of today. A joyful, grateful and an extremely blessed woman who has been touch by others and hopefully who has touched others along my personal journey.