Dianna Mahoney:
CLASS OF 1985
Alhambra High SchoolClass of 1985
Phoenix, AZ
Dianna's Story
Life
After graduating high school, I went onto Community college and then transferred to NAU. Spent 3 years there, married and got involved in auto racing. After graduation, I moved to Phoenix and worked two years before going off to medical school in Tucson. While in medical school my daughter was born. After medical school, I went back to Phoenix for my residency in Family Medicine. While in residency I got divorced (just another statistic, I guess). I then moved to Pinetop/Lakeside in the White Mountains to work on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. It's here I married again. I have been here for 7 1/2 years so far and love the mountain life. My husband and I had my second daughter in June 05.
School
During high school I had few crushes, but I guess my biggest was Brian. I spent most of my time dating someone from another high school.
The one teacher that stands out for me is Senora Plum, my spanish teacher. She took the extra time and effort to get to know me, listened to my issues and gently steared me in the right directions. I used to spend lunch time in her classroom studying and just talking to her. It was a nice break from the normal high school clicks and issues.
I felt high school was both a great experience and a horrible one. I had fun in cheerleading, studied a lot to get good grades, went through the typical emotional growing pains, and built some fantastic friendships. If given the opportunity to repeat high school, however, I would turn it down without hesitation. It was truly a right of passage, but I wouldn't change anything.
In college I met, dated and eventually moved in with my future husband. We went to NAU together and lived off campus. We were poor but had lots of fun. It was during this time I learned peanut butter was a good source of protein and ramen made a great meal for pennies. We didn't have money for meat for most of this time and found out that when you reintroduce it into the diet your body goes into a state of shock - not pretty. We spent our time in the mountains hiking, exploring ice caves, and auto racing when we weren't working.
After marrying and graduating, we moved to Phoenix to work for a couple years. I then went to medical school in Tucson. It was like going to a college on steriods. The amount of material we would normally cover in a semester was covered in just a few weeks. I crammed so much information into my head my brain hurt. I studied constantly. Somehow, however, I fit in having my daughter during my second year of medical school. I took and extra year to finish so I could spend more time with her. It was the best thing I could have done. It was very stressful and required immense juggling skills, but she grounded me and kept me focusing on the important things in life keeping me from sweating the small stuff.
During residency training in Phoenix, my husband and I separa...Expand for more
ted and eventually divorced. (Just another statistic I guess) This was by far the most challenging of all life experiences to date, certainly not what I had hoped after 13 years of marriage. We are lucky though and have been able to keep an amiable relationship such that our daughter still has two very involved parents who don't use her against one another. This ended a very long, drawn out post high school education. I was a professional student ready for a career and life change!
College
see school bio. I included college education.
Workplace
First job at 16 was as a hostess at Denny's (you got to start somewhere). I moved on to be a bookeeper at a scuba diving store and school where I was certified for diving.
During community college I switched jobs to become a receptionist at an aerobics gym. This was during my college "hard-body" days. When I moved to Flagstaff to attend NAU I fell into work study (working as a secretary and lab assistant in chemistry) and held a job at the local kid's clothing store. I also did some research in the chemistry dept.
After graduation, I took a job in Phoenix working in a drugs of abuse testing laboratory for 2 years. I then entered medical school in Tucson and had no time for work until after graduation. I moved back to Phoenix for my residency training in Family Medicine which lasted 3 years. I was very dissappointed to realize I was making as much money in residency as I was prior to attending medical school. Therefore, I also did some moonlighting on the side in the ER of the hospital and in an Urgent Care center for extra cash.
After completing residency, I moved to Pinetop/Lakeside in the White Mountains and took a job working in the hospital and a remote clinic for the Indian Health service on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. I've been here over 7 years and can't imagine being anywhere else.
Military
I am not technically in the military, but I am in one of the 7 uniformed services. I have been a commission corps officer in the Public Health Service for over 7 years now. Our basic training is very different from the military as we don't carry guns. We are soldiers in health. We still have to wear uniforms and conform to physical fitness testing etc. However, we rarely go into a war zone. Mostly we are here to serve the underserved in this country, to help out during war-time by back filling military hospitals etc and to respond to national disasters such as 9/11, hurricanes, floods etc. We are a force made of health care workers of all types which assists where and when we are needed. I have yet to be deployed, but many of my coworkers have been deployed to many of the recent disasters such as the hurricanes in the Southeast. I have, however, been active in the White Mountains during two large fire disasters within the last 4 years here (one of which was the notorious Rodeo-Chediski fire).
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