By Erica Bettencourt
When did you first know you wanted to be a Nurse?
This story is very touching about a patient’s perspective of Nurses at a very young age. Her experience with the Nurses who cared for her over the years, made Nursing an obvious choice for her.
Laurie Lukianov, 26, is a woman from Massachusetts who received two liver transplants as a child and is now working to become a transplant nurse. She told Boston Children's Hospital's blog “There is no question in my mind. Since I was 3 years old, I wanted to be a nurse.”
Laurie was born with biliary atresia and she needed liver transplants to save her life. At 3 years old she made headlines when she became one of the first patients in the country to receive a liver transplant from a living donor -- her father, Alex Lukianov.
When she was 13, Laurie Lukianov needed a second liver transplant. It came from an organ donor, and she had to fight for her life.
"I had 13 emergency surgeries from the two-week span from the initial transplant," Laurie Lukianov said.
But she won the fight and continued on to good health with the help of her family, a great surgeon and nurses.
Now the mother to a 6-year-old boy, already works in a local emergency room and is finishing her first year of nursing school.
Laurie Lukianov is also an advocate for organ donation. She tries to let potential donors know that the medical staff will do everything to save a life. Sometimes modern medicine falls short but, the gift of life is never lost on the recipient.