Once given a month to live, former Oklahoma National Guard sergeant finds new mission in nursing

The solely query now was what to do subsequent.

“I’ve always wondered what I would do if I was told I only have a short amount of time to live,” she stated.

“I always thought I’d probably drain my bank account and fly to Hawaii. But I didn’t do that.”

Instead, Guevara, 26 on the time, selected not to settle for it.

“I didn’t believe it,” she stated. “As I was walking away from the doctor’s office, I thought, ‘I don’t know how, but I have to figure this out.’”

Six years later, the Tulsa native and former Oklahoma National Guard member, who was given solely a month to reside, has been reflecting on that point in her life and the way it modified every thing.

Not solely did Guevara show the prognosis unsuitable, however the expertise impressed her to pursue a new calling in life.

A calling she’s a lot nearer now to attaining.

On Dec. 17, Guevara graduated from a Michigan college nursing program for navy veterans, the place she was chosen for the particular honor of giving a convocation speech.

Guevara, who grew up in Tulsa and attended Edison Preparatory School, graduated beforehand from Tulsa Community College’s nursing program.

She additionally spent eight years with the Oklahoma National Guard and achieved the rank of sergeant.

Guevara had been serious about a medical profession since childhood, she stated, however not essentially as a nurse.

That modified when, as a results of her private well being disaster, she acquired a view of the occupation up shut.

“The care in the hospitals while I was ill — it was the nurses that were by my side the entire time,” she stated.

The expertise that put her on that path started in 2016.

Serving on the time with an Okmulgee-based firm of the 777th Aviation Support Battalion, Guevara was preparing to be deployed to the Middle East along with her unit.

Her plans had been derailed, although, when she had to be rushed to the hospital with extreme stomach ache.

Guevara had been identified 4 years earlier with colitis and had been making an attempt to handle it.

But as she would study, it had changed into a extra critical colon illness with uncommon problems.

On prime of that, she developed a critical associated an infection.

“I call it my perfect storm,” Guevara stated.

How her physician on the time broke the grim news has stayed with Guevara.

“He sat across from me and he looked flustered, and he just put his head in his hands. He didn’t even look at me,” she stated, recalling how she was knowledgeable that she doubtless had just one month to reside.

“Emotionally I just put up these walls and went into tunnel vision,” she stated.

Guevara’s medical supplier didn’t give her any choices. So she set out to discover her personal.

She sought different opinions. Ultimately, one in every of them led her to bear main surgical procedure to take away her colon.

“There was nothing left of it to salvage. It was demolished,” she stated.

But the process was profitable. And it saved her life.

During her ordeal, she’d grow to be addicted to painkillers. So she had to take care of that, as nicely.

But the expertise had additionally impressed a new route. After a nurse informed Guevara that she, too, had the qualities of a good nurse, she took it to coronary heart.

Guevara has made probably the most of her new likelihood at life.

She earned an affiliate diploma in pre-nursing from TCC.

She acquired married. She and her husband later welcomed their first youngster, a daughter.

And she accomplished her purpose of changing into a nurse.

After the household relocated to Michigan, she discovered that Wayne State School of Nursing in Detroit had a particular accelerated program for navy veterans that may permit her to earn a bachelor’s diploma.

Now that she’s formally a graduate, Guevara will go to work at a hospital in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. She’s beginning off as an emergency room nurse. Her purpose is ultimately to transfer into labor and supply.

In her commencement speech, Guevara stated she informed her fellow college students that graduation needs to be a celebration of way more than simply finishing diploma necessities.

“People come in to the ceremonies and say, ‘Hey, nursing school was hard. You did it, congratulations,’” Guevara stated. “But for students like me, that have had all these other problems in life, I told them everything that they have done to get to here matters. Everything.

“The journey is also a part of that process.”

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