This is the first installment of Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Marilyn Lumba is the director of nursing at the Juneau Pioneer Home and an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Alaska Southeast. She began working at the Pioneer Home in 2010, just three months after migrating to Juneau from Tagum City in the Philippines. And while she loves her career now, she didn’t think health care would become her passion.
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This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Marilyn Lumba: Our facility consists of four neighborhoods. So we have Twin Lakes Lodge. We have 10 residents in here.
I always like think, “Okay, what will be the best for the resident? If this is my grandpa, what I’m going to do for them to be happy?”
If you observe, we don’t have uniform. Because this is a home. In your home, you don’t wear uniform, right? So we wanted the resident to feel that this is their home. So we have cats. We have two cats. It depends on the color. If it is Ginger, of course, it’s ginger colored. And Smokey is smoky colored. And we have birds. Before, we even have fish also.
Actually, I wanted to be an accountant — a CPA, a certified public accountant. But my best friend wanted to be a nurse. I said, “Okay, let’s just be a nurse together.” Because we wanted to go together to the same school and all that. And so, I just completed it because my mom doesn’t want me to stop.
I started working here in JPH [Juneau Pioneer Home] in 2010 as an assisted living aide, and I moved here because my husband is here. Like, he petitioned me, together with my daughter. And then I become an assistant professor, in like 2019.
I made the right choice in staying as a nurse because being a nurse is not just — you know how they always say passing meds, like in elderly people? Like here, in a long term care facility, they say, “Oh, you just pass?” No, being here and being a leader, there’s a lot. Like, you have a big impact on this resident — we call them resident, we don’t call them patient.
You become their family, and you wanted — like for me because it becomes my passion — I wanted them to be successful in what they wanted. Like, the quality of life that they deserve.