Sr. Isabel: Being a Daughter of Charity allows me to use my nursing gifts

Currently a volunteer medical office translator for Spanish-speaking, New Orleans-area mothers-to-be, 85-year-old Daughter of Charity Sister Isabel Fierro (pictured above, in blue) has dedicated her life to the twin vocations of the religious sisterhood and nursing, primarily in the area of maternal health. (Photo courtesy of Sister Isabel Fierro, D.C.)

By SISTER ISABEL FIERRO, D.C.
Guest columnist

Little did I know as a young girl what an adventure my life would be!

I was born and raised as the eldest of six children in Tortugas, New Mexico, a small village near Las Cruces.  My parents were Mexican-American – my father a first- generation U.S. citizen, and my mother, a naturalized citizen who had emigrated from northern Mexico when she was 8 years old with her parents and five siblings.

My parents had very little education because both had to work at a young age. They were very responsible, loving parents who valued their Catholic faith, taught us to love God and our neighbor and instilled in us the importance of getting a good education to have a better place in life.

We spoke Spanish at home, so I didn’t start learning English until entering first grade in public school, alongside many other Hispanic children. We were strongly encouraged to speak English and sometimes punished if the teachers heard us speaking Spanish. My father taught us that criticism or comments about who we were could not hurt us, and that we had to show the white students who we were and what we could do – so I became a good student!

In the summer before my senior year in high school, I felt an inner call to religious life. I said to God, “What should I be – a nun or a nurse?” After a brief period of silence, I had a response: “I don’t know any nuns, so I’ll be a nurse!”

That changed when I enrolled in the Hotel Dieu School of Nursing in El Paso, Texas, operated by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. I met many sisters – the Daughters of Charity who were head nurses or supervisors in the hospital units. I observed what they did, how they worked with their staff and how they related to patients and to one another.

By the end of my second year, I heard that call again, but this time God was telling me that I could be both – a religious sister and a nurse!

I became a Daughter of Charity on June 5, 1959. There were many challenges in those early years, but I was determined to be like the sisters I knew at Hotel Dieu. I completed a baccalaureate degree in nursing at Marillac College, located on the same campus as our provincial house in St. Louis.

Having discovered a love for working with expectant mothers, I was sent to The Catholic University in Washington, D.C., to earn my master’s degree in maternal- child health care and nurse midwifery.

Since then, my call to nursing and religious sisterhood has taken me to many places, including two countries in South America: Ecuador, where I taught nursing students in Spanish at a Daughters of Charity-initiated nursing program and worked with families that had poor access to health care; and Bolivia, where I was the director/dean of the Elizabeth Seton School of Nursing in Cochabamba. I spent 12 years there as a faculty member and was privileged to teach young women, many of whom became the first college graduates in their family and made their parents proud!

My time in Bolivia included three additional years at a rural hospital in which I learned a great deal about tropical medicine, and, especially, Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). It was a marvelous public health experience serving the poorest of the poor, who often were marginalized and oppressed. 

When I returned to the United States in 1990, I was asked what I would like to do. Of course I wanted to practice nurse midwifery! After taking a refresher course, I was assigned to a family health center in El Paso as a nurse midwife. It was a wonderful experience serving mothers from both sides of the border.

My 28 years in El Paso also included working in immigrant shelters and across the border in Juarez, Mexico, assisting families in need of healthcare, school supplies and education fees.

Last July, I was asked to come to New Orleans to assist with the care of the growing population of Hispanic people from Central America. I currently volunteer as a translator for the nurse midwife and do some health teaching for the expectant mothers at the Ascension DePaul Community Health Center on South Carrollton Avenue. Social services are available for the families, and home visits are made as needed. There are currently 10 Ascension DePaul health centers in the New Orleans area with some services available for our immigrant families.

In my 62 years as a Daughter of Charity, I have tried to live our charism, “Given to God for the service of Christ in persons who are poor.” The seal of our community represents a heart encompassed by flames, with the figure of Jesus crucified and surrounded by the motto: “The Charity of Christ Crucified Urges Us.”

Life is full of surprises, but God is in charge!