Editor’s note: Amanda Freeman, BSN, RN, achieved her dream of earning a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree from Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston in 2017. After she passed away from a heart attack on Nov. 12, 2024, her friends from the Channel View High School Class of 1998 honored her memory by donating to the Cares Corner, which is stocked weekly with nonperishable foods and toiletry items for students in need.

The tribute below was written by Freeman’s lifelong best friend, Tiffany Harrison. 

In 2005, Amanda was given some of the worst news a mother can face. Her newborn baby had a congenital heart defect that required two open heart surgeries by the time he was two months old. They were at the hospital for months on end during treatment.

It was nurses that held, loved, and took care of her baby during the times she could not. It was nurses who got her through, held her hand, and did everything they could to care for her as much as they did her baby.

In those moments, Amanda made a promise to herself. She would become a nurse so she too could carry others through their pain. She wanted nothing more than to save lives and be a comfort to those in her care.

From the moment she started school, she was committed to learning. She would study at her sons’ baseball games, in the car in between games, and at night after them. The more she learned, the more she burst with desire to be in the hospital nursing as fast as she could.

Nursing school was hard. Nursing school while being a single mom to two boys was hard. Graduating nursing school – that was easy. It was her dream come true, and she experienced a sense of accomplishment she had been waiting her whole life for. As much as she wanted to be a nurse, she wanted to show her children that they too could do hard things, even with what feels like an insurmountable amount of life fighting against them.

She jumped into her career headfirst! Her personality and passion would not allow anything less. She got her first nursing job, and it was immediately confirmed that nursing was her calling. She quickly elevated from nurse to charge nurse, from a small regional hospital to a major hospital in the heart of one of the best medical districts in the world.

Her favorite thing to say each morning was, “I saved a life last night”!

Her memory lives in all those who love her and all of those who she saved and cared for as a nurse.

Thank you to Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth Houston for graduating one of the best. She would want nothing more than for you to accept this donation on her behalf and tell your students, our future nurses, to keep trusting in the process. You are on your way to making your very own dreams-come-true story, and we can’t wait for the first time you get to say, “I saved a life last night!”