CLEVELAND — National Nurses Week celebrates over 4 million nurses across the country, with more to come this weekend.

One of them is Ashley Gibson.

Gibson started her career as an actor while also working in ophthalmology, but in 2019, that all changed. She went to her doctor because she thought she was anemic, but was then diagnosed with leukemia. 

“I mean, honestly, I think it didn’t really sink in,” she said.

Then began the month-long stay at the Cleveland Clinic followed by daily trips to the Clinic for chemotherapy, she explained.

“Let’s do what we have to do to be on the right track and get better,” she said.

The treatment worked, and doctors said she was cancer free in 2020. That is when she decided she wanted to switch things up.

“The biggest thing that inspired me was my care team. They were amazing,” she said.

Gibson made the decision to enroll at Cleveland State University’s nursing school so that she could be the kind of nurse that she had when she was going through treatment.

“They were there to make sure everything was going right, but they were also more than that. They were my support system, they were people to talk to and they didn’t make me feel like a burden. They didn’t make me feel strange or out of place,” she said.

She graduates this weekend and has hopes to relate to her future patients in ways that other people might not be able to.

“Just being able to know what it feels like to be a patient because you feel like such a burden on a staff member, on a friend, and family. You know emotionally, physically, financially. And just to be like I’ve been there, you are not a burden, this is what we’re all here for is to get you better and kind of sympathize and empathize with that,” she said.

Gibson has accepted a job at the Cleveland Clinic as an ICU nurse after she graduates.