A story in the Minot Daily News of Minot, North Dakota tells of how a student nurse from American Samoa left her young family home and traveled all the way to North Dakota to further her nursing career.
The story is about Danielle Jennings Pualau.
“While being raised by her great-grandmother, Pualau, 11 at the time, watched her be hospitalized due to a heart attack.
“She watched her grandmother in pain due to a procedure and while she later learned that it was normal for that procedure, it motivated her to want to become a different type of nurse.
“Pualau had been working as an LPN for 11 years, working for the VA for almost 10.
“After running into an old LPN instructor who is from Devils Lake, she learned about North Dakota’s nursing program.
“Hitting her nine-year mark for the VA, she decided to move to North Dakota with the goal of moving her family too.
“She applied for the nursing program through Bottineau’s program in Minot, but she didn’t actually think she would be accepted, but when she was, she and her family had to make a hard decision.
“The VA wasn’t able to work with my clinical schedule and my class schedule, so I had to resign. Prior to that, I had planned to move everyone out here and after that it just didn’t quite work, we wouldn’t have had the income I had and it would have been unstable with my husband coming out and trying to find a job and I think my daughter at the time needed the security and to stay where she knows,” Pualau explained of the whole situation.
“The VA was her first job out of LPN school, so resigning was very hard for her, but she was taking steps towards a new career. She always had the goal of RN.
“Of course, resigning and staying far from her family was only the first bump on her road to her new degree. Shortly after moving, Pualau became pregnant with her second child,
“Pualau and her family didn’t want to base the decision on her pregnancy because while she had her 6-year-old daughter, she had faced miscarriages since her, so she didn’t wamt/ to make decisions on it,. But in the end she gave birth to her second daughter, Violet, in Minot.
“She continued to work hard with an incredible support system of those from her church, who helped her with supplies and clothes for the baby, her old coworkers from the VA, her classmates, and the employees she met at Trinity working as an office assistant.
“Her instructors worked hard with her to get her required hours, working to get it all done before Violet was born.
“Her family, of course, has also worked to support her from afar in all the ways they can.
“When asked what has kept her going, Pualau said, “I prayed. A lot. This is out of my comfort zone, being so far and the uncertainty of the weather plus being pregnant. My faith has definitely been strengthened.”
“After an awards ceremony a few weeks ago where she won an award for excellence in nursing that her mother and daughter had flown to attend, Pualau headed home to American Samoa to be with her family again.”
