Daynet Vera was on her way to the future she dreamed of. A registered nurse, she was working in a neurology progressive care unit in a Fort Myers hospital. She was also planning her wedding. And she had just earned a scholarship and moved temporarily to Miami to start a full-time Family Nurse Practitioner program at the School of Nursing and Health Studies.
Then, after commuting back home to West Florida one weekend, Vera was relaxing on the couch with her fiancé, watching a movie, when she felt a sharp pain on her right breast. Doing a self-exam, she discovered something suspicious.
A series of imaging appointments confirmed everything they had dreaded. At age 26, Vera was diagnosed with breast cancer.
“You have your whole life planned, you’re having an amazing life, and you’re getting married, you’re going to have kids—all those things—and then all of the sudden you have to make so many decisions,” she says. “It’s like having your whole life in a movie. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Daynet Vera has been interested in health care since her childhood in Santa Clara, Cuba, where she did community service in local hospitals. After moving to the U.S. with her family as a teen, Vera watched her mother transition from her past role as a chemical engineer in Cuba into nursing.
Something clicked for Vera. “I was in the middle of doing my bachelor’s in biology at the time,” she recalls. “I was studying plants and algae and all these animal and evolutionary biology classes, and I looked at her and said, ‘You’re doing what I would love to do.’”
“Nursing is very rewarding,” Vera continues. “I love the fact that you can make a difference in the life of others. Nursing gives me the opportunity to educate, advocate, support, and care for others when they need someone there to fight their fight beside them. It is a privilege for me, and one that drives me to want to become a better person and nurse.”
But after her lifetime of caring for others, Vera found the shift from care provider to patient challenging.
“I kept trying to go back to school. I remember one day they did three biopsies on me, and I went with the gauze and tape and everything to my pharmacology class,” she says. “But I wasn’t able to keep up. I had to leave the program to take care of my health.”
She had no idea if she’d ever make it back. “I don't know if being a nurse and knowing what I was going through made it a little easier or scarier,” she reflects.
Sometime between undergoing surgery at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and starting chemotherapy treatments, Vera decided it was time to get back to her future.
“I need something I love to give me purpose and keep my mind off of all the horrible things going on,” she remembers thinking.
Worried school would prove too taxing, Vera’s mother tried to enlist her daughter’s chemo nurse at Sylvester to explain how difficult it would be. But their conversation only strengthened Vera’s resolve. As it turned out, her chemo nurse was also about to start the M.S.N. program at SONHS. “It was like a sign of destiny,” she says.
Vera and her nurse, now a good friend, both completed the program this past August.
Alejandro Licea, who watched his wife power through all the pain and setbacks, hours of clinicals, long drives, and rigorous coursework these past two years, calls Vera “an undefeated warrior.”
Vera says her family’s love, the expertise of her medical team at Sylvester, and the support of SONHS faculty members like Associate Professor Juan E. González made her achievement possible.
“All the professors were super understanding,” she adds. “I definitely feel the program was worth it. I feel much more confident, more prepared. The knowledge they gave us, the didactic classes and the simulations, all of that helped me become a better nurse.”
González agrees. “Despite everything Daynet was going through, she was able to excel,” he says. “The feedback from her clinical sites was always positive. Her endurance and resilience will set her apart from other nurse practitioners when she starts her clinical practice.”
And that day is coming. This past October, Vera passed her nurse practitioner certification exam. She’s now considering concentrating her practice on neurology, or perhaps oncology because of her own experience.
For now, though, she’s just relieved that the movie she's lived for the past two years has a happy ending featuring her December 10th University of Miami Commencement.
“With all the struggles I went through, it’s a blessing just knowing I was able to complete my goals,” she says. “So we’re celebrating.”
