Nursing a career in medicine

LYNN – When 200 people rose from their seats in the Kernwood Country Club function room on Thursday and applauded Harena Gebreyesus as a Lynn Community Health Center “shining star,” no one was less surprised about the 18-year-old?s success than Linda Galligani.The pair met in 2009 when Gebreyesus, then a Breed Middle School seventh-grader, walked into the school?s health center to get a shot.?She was quiet and patient – not like other middle school children,” Galligani said.Galligani encouraged Gebreyesus to do well in school and Gebreyesus reciprocated.?She would come to see me for her yearly physicals or if she was sick. We would always talk about school and how she was doing – and she was always doing well,” Galligani told her Kernwood audience.When Gebreyesus moved on to English High School, Galligani thought she would lose touch with her, but the teenager scheduled checkups and other appointments with Galligani at the center after Galligani transferred to the Union Street facility to work as a pediatric nurse practitioner.When she expressed an interest in medicine, Galligani told Gebreyesus she could be a doctor someday.?She assured me I can do it – it?s possible,” Gebreyesus said.Gebreyesus? story does not begin in Lynn; it begins in Ethiopia, where she was born. Her mother, Meaza Gebredingil, and father, Ghebrehiwdt Abay, moved their children to Kenya before coming to the United States in 2009. Gebreyesus traces her interest in medicine back to times as a child when she nursed her sisters during illnesses and memories of the helplessness she felt seeing her mother suffer during a long illness.?She was sick for awhile and I couldn?t do much for her,” she said.Galligani is very familiar with helplessness: When her grandfather got sick and she couldn?t help him, Galligani started to think about a medical career.?My mother said, ?You would be really good,?” she said.On Thursday, Galligani introduced to Gebreyesus at the center?s recognition breakfast before the audience applauded the 18-year-old.?Lynn has so many students who are successful. She is a credit to the schools,” said center Director Lori Abrams Berry.Gebreyesus finished her freshman year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst last week, and she starts working as a summer volunteer at the center next week. She is also volunteering this summer at the New American Center on Wheeler Street.Galligani said she was “thrilled” to see her young friend honored on Thursday and happy to hear Gebreyesus is on a pre-medical study track.?She told me, ?I knew this was going to happen,?” Gebreyesus said.