By Pareasa Rahimi
University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Bachelor of Science in Nursing student Emily Fonville’s path to becoming a nurse has not been without its challenges. Soon after Fonville began her sophomore year of high school in 2015, what started as chest pains progressively turned into flu-like symptoms, exhaustion and shortness of breath that continued to worsen. Despite several doctor appointments, there was uncertainty around her health.
“It went on for months,” Fonville said. “It got to the point where I had to be moved downstairs into my mom’s room because I could no longer go up the stairs.”
Fonville’s symptoms persisted until she passed out during a doctor’s visit in December 2015. She was transported to Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis where she went into a coma and was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Due to the severity of her condition, her chances of surviving were extremely low.
Once awake, Fonville had to relearn how to live. Because of her autoimmune disease, she’s more vulnerable to illnesses, which sometimes result in hospitalizations that can last for days to weeks at a time. Since her diagnosis, she’s had 37 hospital visits.
The care Fonville’s nurses gave her during her hospital stay did not go unnoticed. Fonville said the warmth and compassion they showed her inspired her to follow in their footsteps and become a nurse herself.
“My nurses were incredible. I knew I wanted to be a nurse because my nurses were truly the lights of my life during those times. They would come in and talk to me like I was normal 15-year-old girl. They would take time out of their days to make sure my hair looked good, brush my hair when I’d been lying in bed all day,” Fonville said. “I knew from that day on I had to find a purpose from what happened to me, and I found that I was meant to become a nurse and be like the nurses that I had.”
Fonville’s research on best nursing schools in the country led her to UAB. After a campus tour visit with her mom, she knew it was where she would be headed next.
“I loved UAB immediately. I loved that I wasn’t fenced in—I didn’t feel like I was stuck in one place. I felt like this was somewhere I could grow as not just a student in life but as an individual being out on my own for the first time,” Fonville said. “I fell in love with the School of Nursing, and I’ve never looked back.”
In August 2022, two weeks into her first semester of nursing school, Fonville was hospitalized in UAB Hospital’s Medical Intensive Care Unit for two weeks after experiencing severe COVID-19 symptoms.
“Once again, the nurses that I had in the MICU were incredible. They provided the best care that I could have asked for, that my mom could ask for, that anyone would want for a loved one.”
Despite her hospitalization causing her to fall behind in school, Fonville was determined to get back on track. With the support of School of Nursing faculty, staff and her cohort, she was caught up within just a few weeks of returning to school.
"I’m not going to let anything get in the way of being a nurse. I’ve worked too hard to get here,” Fonville said. “I’d never had so many people in my corner as I did when I came back to school. I would not be here today if it weren’t most of my cohort who made sure I was good, offering to help send notes, meet with me to go over what I missed.”
Upon graduating this spring, Fonville will begin working in the emergency department at UAB Hospital. Her goal is to be a flight nurse and she would like to go back to school to become a nurse practitioner.
“UAB has shown me that anything is possible when it comes to nursing. It was hard to get here, and there have been plenty of days that I’ve struggled with not feeling well or having a bad day, but every single time I step into this building, there are people who have my back and there are professors who want to see me succeed,” Fonville said. “It’s incredibly special to say I’m graduating from the UAB School of Nursing and that I’m going to work at UAB. I just can’t wait.”
