After Annette Klinger, APRN, lost her daughter and suffered extreme head injuries in a brutal accident that also resulted in the amputation of much of her right arm, she was told she’d have the mental capacity of a fifth grader. With serious short-term memory problems, her career as a labor and delivery nurse, and her training to become a midwife was over.
And yet she went on to Marysville University of St. Louis to become a board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and was the valedictorian of her class. She also attended the University of Utah where she graduated with a doctorate in nursing in clinical leadership earlier this year. She managed to do all of this, not by focusing on her own need to succeed, but on her desire to help others facing dark times find hope.
It was not an easy path and she has not forgotten how it felt when she had to work just to find hope. At one point, she says she felt she was like a “shell of nothing.”
“When you’re in a dark place sometimes all you can do is survive,” Annette says. “You’re just trying to make it through the day. But there’s also a point that it all becomes a choice. Eventually you have to change from a victim’s role to a role where you’re just taking back your life.”
To go back to school she had to master new ways to learn and remember things. One of the things she did was use color-coded poster boards to help her remember the information she needed for tests.
“I probably worked harder than most people; I’ll be honest,” she says, “but I loved it.”
Annette now works at Primary Children’s Wasatch Canyons Behavior Health Campus where she’s part of Intermountain’s Adolescent Partial Hospital Program (PHP).
"It's my hope to provide care and stop preventable tragedies like suicide so no parent has to endure the pain of losing a child,” she says. “And to help adolescents find hope, because with hope, anything is possible.”
There have been times when Annette struggled to find hope. Two months before the accident her first child died. In addition to challenges caused by the accident, Annette has had to cope with infertility, a divorce, and the sudden loss of a step-child to suicide.
For her, focusing on helping others through their pain, gives her purpose and keeps her going. She shared a few insights that have helped her rebuild her life, in hopes that they might be of help to others facing difficult challenges:
- “Get outside of yourself. There’s nothing greater,” she says. “Even if you’re exhausted at the end of the day, just knowing that you helped somebody can help you so much.”
- Ask yourself if your current approach is working. “Sometimes you say to yourself, ‘I’ve got to look at it a different way because what I’m doing right now isn’t working.’”
- Accept help from others who can assist you as you face hard times. She says we can all use such help from time to time. Intermountain’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP) offers free confidential counseling, training, and 24-hour crises services.
- Find out which organizations and programs you can tap to help you get the additional financing and schooling you need. For example, Intermountain offers tuition reimbursement, fully covered education opportunities, and other resources.
- Help someone else find hope. “If you can give someone a little hope that things might change, that can make a difference to them,” she says. “If you can have a sparkle in your eye, a smile, and a lightness in your heart, and that’s all you can accomplish, well that’s okay.”
- Get more training. She says moving up in your career can help you redirect your pain into something positive. Intermountain offers resources that can help like career coaching, leadership development classes, and mentoring to help guide you on your path.
Annette now enjoys her career, has a “beautifully blended” family with three children and three “bonus children.”
“It’s a life I feel blessed to be in every day,” she says.
Annette says her faith has gotten her through the hard times.
“I couldn’t have prayed big enough for the blessings I’ve had,” she says.
Annette says she got some important help when she was in a medically-induced coma in the hospital after the accident. She says her daughter appeared to her and told her to keep moving forward so she could help others. She says her daughter, “didn’t get the opportunity to be here, so I’d better make my life count.”
If she can help people who are hurting, that’s what she wants to do, Annette says.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than helping someone who’s broken, someone who has no hope, and feels their future is bleak,” Annette says. “You can help because you’ve been there. I can think of no greater honor than to be able to help someone through their darkest times. That’s what counts.”