My name is Michael Jackson. I am 31 years originally born in Seattle, WA. I moved from Seattle to Georgia when I was 1 and half and spent roughly 21 years of my life in Georgia. How did I get to Regis University in Denver, CO and into the Masters in Health Services Administration program? I moved to Colorado in August of 2001 with a wife who was going to graduate school at Denver University. We met in undergrad at the University of Tennessee and got married right before I graduated. Turned out we got married too young and grew apart. After the divorce I started doing mortgages and decided to stay in Denver.
Now how did I go from mortgages to healthcare administration? While receiving my degree in Sociology at Tennessee, my father was diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer. My parents gave me the options of coming back home for school or staying at Tennessee. I opted to stay in Tennessee. Now some might consider that selfish, but I knew that was the best course of action for me was to finish school. See it took me 3 years and 3 schools, transferring 4 times (I transferred to one school twice to get my grades up so I could transfer to another school) to finally find a college where I felt content and happy. I also knew by moving home, I was not going to be able to cure my father’s cancer. Plus, my 3 sisters all lived in Atlanta and I could drive the 3 and half hours home for any emergency. Well after starting to deal with my father having cancer, on the his birthday the following year I called home to wish him happy birthday and my mother gets on the phone and she surprise me with wonderful news that she has stage 1 lung cancer. So now both parents had cancer.
Looking back, this was a major catalyst that led me to this career path. One of the reasons I choose health care administration is because of the wonderful doctors my parents had in treating their cancer, particularly my father. My father was stage 3 when diagnosed, so it was advanced and he had to do some heavy chemo and surgery. The surgery was to remove the cancer from his lungs and the chemo was to try and kill the cancer. My father went into remission, but a year or so later it came back and began to spread and ultimately spread to brain tumors and at the end, bone marrow cancer. My father died in January of 2002, of a heart attack after his last brain surgery to remove more tumors. The physicians my father had were amazing; they answered all of my mother’s questions, explained how things would work and helped us as family deal with everything. I know my mother always praised the doctors on everything they did for my father and ultimately for the family. My mother’s cancer was stage 1, so they went in and cut out the cancerous part of her lung and she went into remission. By having such wonderful doctors, I saw how great communication could help the patient and family deal with such overwhelming circumstances.
Now the next push that brought me to Regis was my mother dying in 2004. My mother was diagnosed in early March 2004 with gallstones. It finally got so bad that she ended in the hospital in the ICU. My mother had her Bachelors, Masters and her PhD. My mother was a smart and intelligent woman who took bad advice and checked herself out of the hospital because she thought she was fine. Ultimately it was the breakdown of communication with herself and her doctor that led to her passing. Her physician was a foreign national and English was not his native language and they were not communicating with each other and she checked herself out and got septic and that is what caused my mother to pass. Now please don’t miss understand me, I am not and have never been upset with her physician. Like I said my mother was smart and she made the decision to check herself out because she thought she was ok. However, the lack of communication between my mother and her doctor led me to where I am today. I believe with great communication between patient, doctor and family, the medical process can be an obstacle that can be dealt with. Ultimately there is no reason for my sisters and me to be without both parents; my mother should still be here. I choose this career path to help in that regards. If I can help one family have better communication between doctor and patient and help them make better decisions, just maybe someone else won’t be 27 and have to get the phone call that their mother has just passed 3 days after their birthday.
Once I started this program and have had more access to the health care industry, I have found some other passions and ways to help in this field. One way is going on the service trip with the school to Ethiopia and Project Mercy. Another way is by volunteering at the hospital. I would recommend to anyone who is thinking about this career path, who has no healthcare experience to volunteer and see how giving can help and change how one views the world.
