Donna Ellis:  

My Life I was a Rotary Exchange student my senior year to Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico so I did not graduate with the rest of the class. I decided to take the college entrance test and passed so I went to SOC with some of you. In high school I wanted to be an RN but was encouraged to aim higher by the school counselor since I did well on the PSAT test. I was taking general requirements and science classes for a year then transferred to OSU for a year. Then I decided to go to a less expensive school and decided on Idaho State University in Pocatello, ID. I finished the prerequisites and did get into Pharmacy school but got a "D" a lab class for not being accurate enough in measuring tare weights to the 1000th of a mg and for not being able to fold my papers, for the powders weighed, precisely enough (Ugh, both of these are things most drug dealers can do-joke intended!). I looked at nursing but there was a nursing glut at that time and I was discouraged from pursuing an RN degree. So I applied to the Speech Pathology and Audiology department. I got a BS in Speech Pathology in 1984 and an MS in Audiology in 1985. My first job was working for the British Columbia Ministry of Health. I was was assigned to the South Central Health in Kamloops, BC and spent Christmas of 1985 getting settled in. In Kamloops, BC, Canada during 1986 while I was working as an Audiologist. I went on a paddleboat cruise on the Thompson River 'for singles' hoping to meet some girlfriends to hang out with but ended up meeting Jeffrey and his mother (both singles) instead. Jeff and I went out to a movie the next night; he was a landed immigrant like me from the US who moved to Canada as a child. We lived together in Canada. In 1990, I decided to move back to Oregon to finally attend Nursing School. I attended Clackamas Community college and worked at Dammasch State Mental Hospital. Jeffrey moved to Oregon shortly and we were married in 1992. I continued working as an RN at Dammasch until it closed in 1994 due to the Federally mandated deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients. I didn't reali...Expand for more