USD MAGAZINE
DANIEL TELLES ‘21 (MBA)
CLASS NOTES
[poignant]
QUITE A LOVE STORY Father and daughter take the walk of a lifetime
F
by Cameran Biltucci rom an early age, Whitney Buzbee ’21 (MSN) knew she wanted to become a nurse. Her grandmother was an emergency room nurse who later developed Alzheimer’s disease — and that heartbreaking
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U S D M A GA ZI N E
circumstance was primarily how Buzbee knew her. “Caring for her and helping my family care for her when she was progressing in the disease really opened up my eyes to the caregivers and nurses taking care
of her. That was my light into nursing,” says Buzbee. Although her experience with her grandmother made a big impact, a high school anatomy class finalized her path. “I was amazed at what the human body could do.”
Fast forward to March of 2020. Buzbee was attending USD’s Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science to earn a Master of Science in nursing, specializing as a family nurse practitioner, while also working as a nurse at a local hospital. That’s when the coronavirus pandemic hit. “We had started to hear about COVID, but didn’t know the extent of it yet. I got a phone call one day saying I had been exposed,” she recalls. She began her quarantine, and a few days