Ex-Bone Marrow Patient Goes Back to the Hospital as a Nurse

Nurse Rodrigo Nunez seems right at home as he walks the hallways of the Bone Marrow Transplant Center at the City of Hope.

He waves at a patient through an open door, and glances compassionately through windows at others who are being kept in post-operative isolation to lessen their chance of infection.

Nunez’s ease does not come just from professional confidence. A dozen years ago, he was a patient here himself.

His illness was diagnosed in 1978 as aplastic anemia, a disorder in which the bone marrow fails to produce healthy red blood cells. He was treated at City of Hope’s National Medical Center and Research Institute, and the experience inspired him to become a nurse there.

“Those bone marrow nurses are great,” Nunez said. “To work there you have to be special.”

Nunez, 29, with dark curly hair and glasses, has worked as a nurse in the unit for three months. Before that, he was in the hospital’s hematology unit for two years, part of the time as a student nurse.

Colleagues use words such as “super nice,” “very bright,” “dynamic” and “funny” to describe Nunez. But mostly people comment on his rapport with patients.

Karen McCurdy, a nurse at City of Hope for 16 years, knew Nunez when he was a patient. Now she works next to him.

“The patients like him very much,” she said. “Women patients who usually only want women nurses to take care of them say, ‘But it’s OK if it’s Rodrigo.’ ”

Nunez said he likes the patients in return and enjoys working closely with them. He also values his relationship with doctors and fellow nurses and the feeling he gets at the end of a shift.

“I like everything about nursing,” he said. “I like to see what has been accomplished by the end of the day.”

McCurdy said Nunez’s ability to empathize with patients also makes him an excellent nurse.

“He’s an inspiration to patients because they can see he came up on the other side of this (disorder), and he’s done very well,” she said.

Nunez’s condition has reversed itself. He receives annual checkups at City of Hope to monitor his blood count but does not require any medicine or other treatment.

A resident of San Gabriel, Nunez is originally from Guanajuato, Mexico. In 1977, at the age of 17, he came alone to the United States to work and started picking grapes in Livingston in Northern California.

In 1978, Nunez realized something was wrong when he started having frequent nosebleeds and unexplained bruises. After he passed out on his way to the grocery store, he landed in the local hospital, which sent him to City of Hope for treatment at the Bone Marrow Transplant Center, then two years old.

The City of Hope arranged for Nunez’s parents and six siblings, still living in Mexico, to go to the University of Guadalajara for screening to determine whether they could donate bone marrow to Rodrigo. After the tests, the hospital flew Nunez’s oldest and youngest brothers to California. The oldest donated marrow; the youngest, blood platelets.

The hospital determined that Nunez, who had little money and no health insurance, was a worthy case and agreed to provide full treatment at no charge. Nunez became one of nearly 600 adults and children who have been treated at the 30-bed facility, the largest of its type not affiliated with a university, since it opened in 1976.

Before the procedure, City of Hope officials sent Nunez to live with a volunteer South Pasadena family for 10 days in an attempt to make up for the loneliness of the lengthy post-operative isolation he would experience.

Nunez resisted. He liked the hospital, with its three meals a day, sponge baths and bed-making services, he insisted.

However, he ended up fitting in well with Ralph and Lidia Hidalgo and their three children--so well, in fact, that the planned 10-day visit eventually extended to five years.

The Hidalgos took care of Nunez after the operation, when he got pneumonia and experienced a negative reaction to the transplant. The family, who received no compensation, allowed Nunez to live with them while he attended South Pasadena High School. He later worked his way through Pasadena City College, where he received his RN degree in 1988.

During high school and college, he worked part time at a convalescent home as a janitor, and later as a nurse’s aide. The contact with elderly patients reinforced his desire to be a nurse.

Lidia Hidalgo said Nunez’s personality makes him a nursing success.

“He has a personality that makes his feeling for people really come across,” she said. “He’s destined to do exactly what he’s doing.”

Nunez agrees.

“I’m happy at the City of Hope,” he said. “I see myself here until I die.”