The first time Damián Ernesto Rodríguez Rondón lost a baby, he wasn’t prepared. No one ever is. He had only been a nurse for a short time, had just earned his degree, and possessed that dangerous confidence of someone who believes knowledge protects them from everything. But medicine doesn’t warn you when it’s going to show you its cruelest side.
It was a full-term baby. The mother had been admitted with preeclampsia, a condition the doctors were monitoring closely. Suddenly, everything spiraled out of control. Eclampsia. Seizures. The room filled with voices, orders, and people rushing about. Damián was the circulating nurse: the one who assists the doctor, hands him instruments, and keeps things running so others can do their jobs.
They performed the C-section with the speed an emergency demands. But the baby didn’t survive. “That really got me down,” he says today, his voice still low, as if the memory still weighs heavily on him. “It really affected me.”
That night, Damián came home in tears. It wasn’t a restrained tear; it was the emotional breakdown of someone who discovers that the profession he chose also comes with an emotional toll that no one warns you about in the classroom.
“I was in a bad way, depressed. That’s when I told the mother of my daughters,” he recalls. She listened to him; she understood. There wasn’t much else to do. The next morning, he had to go back to the hospital, put on his uniform, and carry on.
“That’s the first big test they put you through,” he reflects. “Because we’ve had several emergencies here, but they’ve turned out well. This strengthens you, it shapes you, but yes, it really left a mark on me.”
FROM STRETCHER-BEARER TO NURSE: A JOURNEY NO ONE GAVE HIM ON A SILVER PLATTER
What many people don’t know is that Damián didn’t walk into that delivery room with a degree under his belt. He arrived carrying stretchers.
In 2018, fresh from a small town in Colombia and with two young daughters to support, he was working at Pastos y Forraje. The wages were low. When he heard there were openings at Ernesto Guevara Hospital, he didn’t hesitate. He started as a member of the Security and Protection Corps (CVP in Spanish), controlling access in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“People wanted to come in, but we couldn’t allow it to prevent crowding. Many were disrespectful to me. One day, I even got into trouble. That started to disappoint me.”
He decided to escape that pressure. He asked Nauri, who was the head of the Maternity Ward at the time, for help in getting a job as a stretcher bearer. But all he could get was a position as an Assistant B: cleaning windows and blinds.
“I said, ‘Well, yeah, why not? Let’s start on a calmer note,’” he recalls with a smile.
A week later, a stretcher bearer left his position. Damián took over. And there, amid patients coming and going from the delivery room, he began to see his future in a new light.
THE CURIOSITY THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
“I grew very close to the nurses. There were some who asked me for help because many of them were going on sick leave. They’d say to me, ‘Damián, help me move this patient, pass me that…’,” he recounts.
He asked about everything: what that medication was, what it was used for, and what side effects it might cause. The nurses answered his questions. One day, Yaimara, a registered nurse, asked him to help her apply pressure to a patient’s arm so she could insert an IV.
“I told her, ‘Yaimara, I want to insert an IV. Will you teach me?’” he recalls. She told him they had to ask the doctor for permission. They did. The doctor approved. Damián inserted his first IV using the correct procedure: asepsis and antisepsis, the alcohol swab, the dry swab.
“That was just one needle stick. I inserted the IV perfectly, and it really motivated me even more.”
From there, he moved on to assisting with deliveries. The head nurse on duty, given the shortage of nurses, taught him under medical supervision.
Later, Damián told Professor Jesús, the hospital’s head of student affairs, that he wanted to study nursing. The professor took down his information and promised to keep him in mind. Months later, he sought him out to share the news: he had been accepted into the basic nursing program, was relieved of his duties, and would continue to receive 100 percent of his salary.
“I was overjoyed right away. I was achieving what I’d longed for so much,” he confesses.
THE PRIDE OF A FIRST DELIVERY
If the loss of the baby showed her the darkest side of the profession, her first delivery brought back the light.
“The doctors were all busy. That day, five deliveries happened at the same time, and I was the one who had to handle one of them,” she says with obvious pride. “I had to perform the episiotomy, and I sutured it very well. I left feeling satisfied that I’d contributed something, that I’d done something right.”
Today, Damián is in his first year of a bachelor’s degree in nursing. He wants to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology or anesthesia. “I plan to finish my four years, earn my degree, and then, if I’m accepted, pursue a specialty.”
Damián knows his story is unusual. He recalls that many looked down on him when he was a stretcher bearer. “Sometimes they made me feel down. They’d say, ‘How can a mere stretcher bearer become a nurse?’ And I’d reply, ‘It’s all about wanting to better yourself.’”
His family, which has never had any ties to medicine —his father is a driver; his mother, a teacher— is proud of him today. “I’m the only one in my family who has gone into healthcare.”
And for those who today carry stretchers, mop floors, or man the front desk, he has a clear message: “Don’t feel like you’re any less than anyone else. Even if they’re stretcher bearers, orderlies, or CVP staff, everyone can reach and achieve whatever they set their minds to.”
Damián Ernesto Rodríguez Rondón learned that medicine isn’t just about saving lives. Sometimes it’s about accompanying someone through their pain, mourning it in silence, and getting up the next day to try again. That lesson —the hardest one— is what sustains him today.