Health Caring

Excerpts from the commencement address of  Bryan M. Bilbao, who graduated with a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in physician assistant studies in August 2022. Bilbao’s experiences with his grandmother’s care prompted him to complete two student projects addressing disparities in health care.

I am a first-generation American. My parents and grandparents moved to the United States from Uruguay nearly 35 years ago. They immigrated here, barely speaking English, no college education, taking whatever jobs they could get, just to provide a better life for, not only myself, but also my three sisters. They never took days off.

I’m going to tell you three things I learned along the way from my parents and grandparents:

My dad used to say this to me all the time when I was growing up playing soccer or when we were talking about professional players, especially those on the Uruguayan National Team. The last few years, tu camiseta, your jersey, was Penn College. Once in the workforce, we will all have a different camiseta, and we’ll have to represent it. 

We are all in our specific fields for some “por qué” – some why. I want you to ponder: Why work this hard? Why go through all that you did to get where you are right now?

My “why” happens to always have been my late nonna, Italia Gallo Cusati. She took care of my sisters and me while my parents and grandfather were at work.

At 5 years old, her mother put her on a ship and sent her (from Italy) to Uruguay. Her mom did that in the hope that she could find opportunity and start a new life. My nonna went alone with her father. He was a tyrant. He forced my nonna to lie, say she was going to school, but work essentially as a servant. 

Even after moving to the United States, she suffered chronic health conditions. It was my mission, whenever I saw her, to make her smile. Every time I left, she would tell me:
 

Our lives will now revolve around the very education we received and putting into practice everything we learned. These long hours we spend at work, it’s going to take tolls on us. Burnout is, unfortunately, a real thing. With all these things going on, I want us to remember that phrase: No te pierdas. 

In health care, for instance, don’t get lost in your work and forget that that patient you are seeing is coming to you in a time of vulnerability – even if you’ve been there two hours extra, and you’re on a seven-day stretch, and you want to go home.

Have the gumption. Help them. Stand up for the smaller person.

My nonna was always treated as a second-class citizen, just because she couldn’t speak English and needed members of our family to help translate. 

What if that patient was your mother? What if that customer was your grandmother? It doesn’t matter what field you’re going into: You’re going to always deal with somebody’s somebody. Please don’t ever forget that.

Don’t get lost when your back is against the wall and it feels like your world is caving in, and that you don’t have any more to give. Take a breath. Think about your “Why.” Renavigate accordingly. And get back on track. Remember: No te pierdas.