To all that read this post, I am a sophomore-nursing student at Saint Anselm College. As stated by the mission statement, my college incorporates opportunities for professional preparation in a learning community that encourages the lifelong pursuit of the truth and fosters intellectual, moral and spiritual growth to sustain and enrich its graduates’ personal lives and engagement within local, national, and global communities. While that all sounds rather dry on paper, it has truly transformed my life works and myself as a person. I believe that no other school gives their students the tools to excel as a professional in their prospective field and as a human being like Saint Anselm College. I’ve watched the most impoverished people rise up from truly dreadful circumstances due to the work of my school and the inspired students within it.

I was given the incredible opportunity of volunteering as an advocate for the YWCA’s crisis line for course credit. The mission of the YWCA is to improve and promote effective prevention, intervention, and treatment to survivors and perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence. I volunteer for twelve-hour shifts twice a month every month.

The most intense conflict that I was called to resolve was for a women in the advanced stages of Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or ALS. ALS is an incurable fatal neuromuscular disease resulting in progressive muscle weakness and eventually paralysis. The disease attacks nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord where they deteriorate and eventually die. Symptoms include stiffness and increasing muscle weakness, especially involving the hands and feet. The disease eventually affects speech, swallowing and breathing. ALS only attacks motor neurons that control the body’s voluntary muscles, so patients’ minds and senses are not impaired. I say this because it is crucial in understanding the situation of this incredibly brave woman that I met through service at my school.

I was called to the Catholic Medical Center at 1:58 in the morning on a Saturday. She had been rushed to the hospital for the third time in the last two months due to her husband’s refusal to feed and change her for weeks at a time. He also abused their nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter leaving her unable to do nothing but watch. I was asked to come in and provide this woman the resources to prosecute her husband and keep him away from her children. This was the first call that I ever received as an 18-year-old freshman straight out of Vermont. I had never seen an individual facing such fervid adversity. Sitting there unable to communicate to me verbally, she used the limited use of her index finger to type me her story.

Her sister, age 40, looked at me and said, “You can’t be older than 18. How are you supposed to help us?” I continue to ask that question every day. How was I supposed to look at those children and promise them that when their mother was discharged, that a simple piece of paper was going to restrain a man from entering their home and inflicting physical harm? How was I supposed to ensure them that their mother who could barely lift a finger and had no chance of making so much as a whisper would be able to enforce a restraining order? The fact is, I couldn’t. All I could do was hold this woman’s hand as tears ran down her face while typing her story. Sometimes all you can do is give supportive listening and a loving touch.

My school has also given me the honor of representing the my nursing class on a service trip to the Mustard Seed Community in Montego Bay, Jamaica, working as a student coordinator for the Greater Manchester AIDs Project, serving impoverished children through VNA Childcare, and learning with children living with autism and downs syndrome at Selma Deitch Early Learning Program.

I won’t excel as a nurse because my school has the most advanced technology around, rather I will be a good nurse because I’ve seen the lengths that people go to for survival and I have learned how to help them through. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “whatever you do in this life will be insignificant, but it’s very important that you do it.”

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog!

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Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh unleashed a hateful tirade against 30-year-old Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke, who became a birth control activist after her friend couldn’t afford the contraception that would treat her ovarian cysts.

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