Elizabeth Haddon
Elizabeth Haddon knew by age 5 that she wanted to work in healthcare. Ironically, it was her health that almost kept her from realizing that dream.
Elizabeth was a wife and mother of five children when she started college. Her youngest child was a senior in high school when she enrolled in college to pursue her dream of being a nurse. Just as Elizabeth was accepted to nursing school and began taking classes in the early 1990s, she was diagnosed with lupus. Undeterred, Elizabeth continued the rigorous nursing coursework.
Elizabeth was in her last year of nursing school when she went through a difficult divorce and was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a type of lymphoma. She had completed the nursing coursework but not the clinical requirements and she wasn’t able to continue. She was devastated.
Elizabeth’s nursing classmates graduated in May 2005. Even though they recognized her at the graduation ceremony, everyday Elizabeth was overwhelmed with a sense of loss as the chemotherapy treatments began.
In May 2007, the cancer was in remission and Elizabeth applied to the Medical Assisting Program at Richland College. Elizabeth was nervous about returning to college as she was having some memory loss due to the chemotherapy treatments. With encouragement from her instructors, specifically Amber Reedy, Elizabeth persevered.
During Elizabeth’s clinical externship, a PET scan indicated a “hot” spot and she had to have another minor surgery. Elizabeth started to worry that she wouldn’t be able to finish and that her dream would once again slip through her grasp.
With the support of program administrator Shannon Ydoyaga to complete the externships, Elizabeth completed the program in January 2008 and soon after was offered a full-time Medical Assisting position with an internal medicine physician in Plano.
“Getting to this point in my life has taken many years of waiting, been full of sadness for losing my way to my dreams, and yet, I have found my dream again. It is living and breathing,” Elizabeth says. “In every downturn in life, if one looks and listens, he or she will see something good happening.”