People often tell Gracie Grote that she’s lived a lot of life in just a few years.
It started when Gracie became a single mom in 2019 after giving birth to her son, Hayes. Then in quick succession, Gracie’s mom died, Gracie battled depression and her father was diagnosed with cancer.
Simultaneously, Gracie also completed the radiography program, the sonography program and a post-baccalaureate certificate through the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Gracie, now 24, will graduate with her master’s degree from the UNMC College of Allied Health Professions in May. She’s also getting married that month.
To get through it all, Gracie learned how to ask for help. She relied on her family, friends, UNMC faculty and mental health professionals. They helped take care of Hayes, they helped make new plans in the face of roadblocks and encouraged her to keep going.
“It was a really dark time so trying to see any positives was very difficult,” Gracie said. “But since then as I’ve gotten out of that dark spot and pushed through and made it through that is the biggest thing ... making it.”
Gracie said she wants people to know that if she did it, then other people can too.
“Everybody has potential and can be successful, they’ve just got to push through the hard stuff,” Gracie said. “And there’s always a reward at the end.”
Inspired by her mother to enter medical field
Gracie grew up watching her mother give ultrasounds to pregnant dolphins in Hawaii and X-rays to large pythons in Texas.
Trisha Grote, also a graduate of UNMC’s radiography and sonography programs, worked with people before she switched to animals. She traveled all across the country, often bringing Gracie with her.
Patients might not think about the crucial role radiographers and sonographers play in health care until they encounter one.
A patient goes to doctors with symptoms or questions, but it’s the images produced by radiographers and sonographers that help doctors determine what’s going on.
“We provide a missing piece of the puzzle,” said Tammy Webster, who was the director of UNMC’s radiography program when she met Gracie.
And sometimes, like in the case of Trisha, they put the puzzle together all by themselves.
In May of 2010, Trisha was testing out the image quality on a new ultrasound machine and scanned her own liver. She discovered several tumors and was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She received a liver transplant at age 40.
“She was young, she was healthy, she didn’t really drink, she didn’t do any of that,” Gracie said. “She took really good care of herself so I think that helped in getting her a liver so quickly.”
Gracie knew she wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
After one year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Gracie applied and was accepted into UNMC’s radiography program. She was pregnant while interviewing for a spot in the program, but she didn’t know it at the time.
When they met to discuss Gracie’s pregnancy, Webster told Gracie that she could delay starting the program for a year to adjust to being a single mom.
Gracie said no.
“It’s going to be a lot harder taking care of a 1-year-old than it will be a newborn, in my opinion,” Gracie told Webster. “Let’s just get it done.”
Webster kept following up with Gracie. Together, they made plans and strategies on how Gracie could manage school and being a new mom.
“I think Gracie’s story tells us that let’s not overlook a creative approach to what feels very very structured with no opportunity for flexibility,” Webster said. “She found the rocky road separate from the paved. You still get to where you wanted to go. And that’s OK. It’s a different way of doing it but you’re still doing it. Find a new roadmap. She did that.”
Gracie started the program at UNMC’s Kearney campus in fall of 2019 and gave birth to her son, Hayes, a few weeks later. Trisha picked Gracie and Hayes up from the hospital and the three of them lived together in Overton, Nebraska.
“My mom was my rock. She was my go-to for everything,” Gracie said. “She did everything for my brother and I. She would go to the ends of the Earth.”
Gracie took three weeks off from school for maternity leave and then went back. She’d be up at all hours of the night with Hayes and then get up at 5 a.m. so she could make it to Grand Island for clinic duty at 7 a.m.
“I look back and I don’t even remember a lot of it because I think I was just in survival mode of how I could keep my grades up and take care of Hayes and be where I needed to be,” Gracie said. “Very time consuming. Very demanding.”
New mom loses her own mother
When Hayes was about 9 months old, Trisha got sick again.
It came on fast.
Gracie chatted with Trisha in the morning about grabbing lunch and by that afternoon, Trisha was in the hospital.
Gracie said her mother got sick often in the years after her transplant and likely needed a new liver but didn’t talk about that with Gracie or her brother.
“She didn’t want us to worry,” Gracie said. “She didn’t want us to think she was giving up on us, but I know the 10 years after her transplant were rough on her, and I don’t think she wanted to do it anymore. Which is understandable now.”
Trisha died August 8, 2020.
“When someone close to you like that dies, the world just keeps going,” Gracie said. “It doesn’t stop like yours does. That was probably one of the hardest parts for me. I didn’t have time to grieve. I still had to go to school, I still had to take care of my son.”
For Gracie, it eventually became too much.
“I would come home from clinic every day and just cry,” she said. “It was just a really really dark time for me.”
In November of 2020, Gracie reached out to her mental health counselor.
“I remember calling her and telling her, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be the mom my son deserves. I’m incredibly sad. I need help. We have to do something.’”
Gracie spent three days at a hospital in Kearney. In the coming years, she regularly visited a psychiatrist and counselor and took medications, including antidepressants.
Gracie said sometimes people are ashamed to take antidepressants or even admit they might need them, but it doesn’t mean someone is weak or crazy.
“It just means that you need a little help right now, but it’s temporary,” Gracie said. “It doesn’t have to last forever and even if it does, that’s fine.”
Gracie missed more time at school while getting the help she needed, but Webster was there and ready to help her make a new plan.
Webster said Gracie was eager, willing and dedicated, but she also had the courage to ask for help when she needed it.
“That’s a very vulnerable thing to do,” Webster said. “You want everybody to think, ‘I got this. I got this.’ And you do, you have it. And it’s OK to have support to have it. That doesn’t diminish you as an individual.”
Gracie said the staff at UNMC was like another family, which is something she never expected from a university.
“She got on my level and she almost understood where I was coming from,” Gracie said of Webster. “She heard me. She saw me. And she was willing to do whatever it took to push me through this and help me through this.”
In May 2021, Gracie received a bachelor’s degree in medical imaging and therapeutic sciences. Then she started UNMC’s sonography program in August.
‘It takes a village to raise a child’
In the months between the two programs, Gracie used her new radiography training and worked three jobs to make ends meet. She studied for several big tests that were required in order for her to work in clinical settings.
And she got ready for the yearlong sonography program. As part of the program, Gracie had three nine-hour clinical shifts a week and two eight-hour class days a week.
Some of Gracie’s days started before 7 a.m. and ended around 9:30 p.m.
To make it all work, family and friends rallied around her. They took turns babysitting Hayes and occasionally kept him overnight or picked him up from day care.
“They were great positive influences that kept encouraging her, kept loving her and she got her mind right and she focused and she just keeps achieving goals,” Larry Grote, Gracie’s father, said.
People called and texted to check in. Sometimes they’d offer to have Gracie and Hayes stop by, just so Gracie could get a break for a few hours.
“I understand now what people mean when they say it takes a village to raise a child,” Gracie said. “This boy wouldn’t be who he is without all those people. And we would not be where we are without all those people either.”
‘It was just like PTSD’
A few months into her sonography program, Gracie got a phone call from her father.
Larry told his daughter that he had cancer.
“It was just like PTSD. It was fear,” Gracie said. “It was just so many emotions in one just because I just did this ... with my mom.”
Larry moved in with Gracie and Hayes while he received treatment. Larry’s treatments were successful and he’s now in remission.
Gracie said having her father around was comforting as she finished up the sonography program and graduated in August 2022.
She waited a few days, but then started classes to get her master’s degree. She graduates in May.
Gracie now works as a general sonographer for Advanced Medical Imaging in Lincoln.
When people come in to Advanced Medical Imaging, they often have questions about their health and puzzles that need to be solved. Sometimes, they’re scared, anxious and wondering what will come next. Gracie knows the feeling well.
“I’m treating my patients, the way I think of it, how I would treat my mom if she was in there,” Gracie said.
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“I look back and I don’t even remember alot of it because I think I was just in survival mode of how I could keep my grades up and take care of Hayes and be where I needed to be. Very time consuming. Very demanding.”— Gracie Grote