Cynthia Chance:  

As quiet and shy as I was, I never would have thought my life would unfold as it has. I have lived in Colorado, Utah and Texas. I completed a PhD in Nursing. My career has been focused on public health. I practiced public health nursing in California, Colorado, and Utah then moved into academe in 1985 where I remained for 19 years. Although I am not LDS, I taught 14 years at BYU and 5 years at the University of Texas at Austin. My specialty in my PhD program was transcultural nursing. My population of interest has been American Indians, I have worked with the Ute and Navajo in Utah and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas and urban Indians in Texas. While in Utah originally, my husband of 21 years had a midlife crisis and "simplified his life" which did not include me and the kids. Unfortunately I remarried too soon and stayed in a loveless relationship for 10 years. To make a long story, when my husband found a job in Texas, I decided to follow. I had been in Salt Lake City too long. My children, who were adults, remained in Salt Lake City. I divorced while in Texas. I lived there for ten years which were some of the best years of my life. I taught 5 years at The University of Texas at Austin. I finally burned out and returned to service. I worked as the pandemic influenza coordinator for the Texas Department of State Health Services. Although my specialty was panflu, I was part of incident command for all emergency responses including Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Dolly, Gustav, and Ike as well as during the first wave of 2009 H1N1 influenza epidemic. While in Texas I divorced and soon met my sole mate, Gus. Gus, an electrical engineer, was, the smartest person I had ever known. He could solve differential equations in his brain while I can't even define one. My husband was transferred to Salt Lake City and I accepted a similar position to my Texas job at the Salt Lake County Health Department in 2009. The timing was great. I moved back just in time for the birth of my first (and likely only) grandchild. Sadly my husband died of esophageal cancer in 2011 almost exactly 1 year after diagnosis and 2 years after we move back to Salt Lake City. That was the hardest year of my life. Update: It is now 2015 and a few years since my last posting. I still think of my deceased husband daily, but life goes on. I am in a relationship with another engineer, mechanical.this time. He retired a year ago. I do not intend to marry again, I am still at the health department. My experience and contacts at the Department of State Health Services have followed me, I am on two CDC work groups. One is planning antiviral and vaccine dispensing through commercial pharmacies during a severe pandemic' the other is working on a national system of phone triage during a pandemic. There are two potential novel viruses that have pandemic potential circulating in fowl at this time - H5N1 and H7N9. Both with 50-60% fatality rates. I reviewer ...Expand for more