Dixie Durham:
CLASS OF 1978
Caldwell High SchoolClass of 1978
Caldwell, ID
Whitman CollegeClass of 1982
Walla walla, WA
Dixie's Story
After leaving Caldwell High School in 1978, I vowed never to come back to the Treasure Valley.
I moved to Walla Walla, WA, and attended Whitman College, majoring in biology. After I got my bachelor's degree, I moved back home and married a Caldwell High School graduate (Paul Durham, class of 1975).
I went to respiratory therapy school at BSU and got a job at St. Luke's. We moved to Boise and have lived in a couple of apartments, a mobile home, and a house.
I've been at St. Luke's since 1983. I helped open their PICU in 1985 and worked full time in the unit for a few years. Had a couple of babies, went part time, worked pediatrics, NICU, and PICU for most of my time in respiratory therapy. In 2000, I helped start the cystic fibrosis clinic at St. Luke's, and have worked there since.
My parents passed in Jan 2005 and December 2008, and my kids are grown and gone. After my dad died, I went back to school and got a mast...Expand for more
er's degree in health science research. I've been working as a clinical research coordinator since 2007. I started out doing strictly cystic fibrosis studies, and in 2020 started working on Covid 19 studies.
I help pick studies, see if we have the patients and the resources for the study, do the regulatory documents and budgets for the study, recruit the patients and do the informed consent, do the scheduling, blood work, paperwork, and lab shipping, and anything else that needs to be done.
As if 2020 didn't suck enough, I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in May and found that I had one of the BRCA genes. I finished chemo after 20 weeks in November, and had surgery in December. I'm glad to say that I am cancer free per the pathologies they did after surgery. No cancer in either breast or in the lymph nodes they tested. So I'm done with treatment and officially a cancer survivor.
Looking forward to 2021.
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