May 5, 2021
Brenda Hansen, RN, Manager, Hospice Services
“It was great growing up in small town Minnesota. I think the census now in Eden Valley might be 1000 people. I was very close to my grandmother who died when I was in my late teens. We spent a lot of time together. Her name was Stella. Stella Ellison. She brightened everyone’s day. She and my grandfather were poor. They grew everything and made everything homemade and were 100 percent Norwegian. She made the best pies—hands down—and people would come to buy them. Meanwhile, my grandfather held three different jobs. He was the man at the gas pump, the church janitor, and a deputy sheriff.
I remember when I landed at St Cloud Hospital as a secretary, I thought, ‘I found my people!’ Medical work was somehow woven into me, like a calling. Maybe it’s the idea of the wounded healer. So, when one of my mentors, Dr. Virnig the first neonatologist, sat me down one day and said, ‘You need to go back to school and get your MBA,’ I was like, ‘An MBA? I’m not a numbers gal.’ I didn’t have a degree, but after talking with others in the group, I decided to go back to school for nursing. While I was in school, I worked as a health unit coordinator in the ICU, then did an ICU internship, and then became an ICU nurse and that’s where I learned to be with the dying. It’s just the most sacred of moments in healthcare.”