By Crystal McGough, Associate Editor
TRUSSVILLE – Jacob Davidson didn’t always know exactly what he wanted to do with his life, but one thing he did know was that he wanted to spend it helping people.
In 2018, when Davidson nearly died of blood loss after having multiple large ulcers rupture in his small intestine, everything changed.
“It was just a normal day; at that time, I was installing security systems for ADT,” he said. “I work up very early, and as soon as I woke up, I felt funny.”
Despite feeling something was off, Davidson drove to Pelham for a work meeting. The meeting, however, did not go quite as he expected.
“I walked in the door and the first thing I did was run immediately to the bathroom and throw up, and it was all blood,” he said. “I was already weak at that point, so I ended up laying on the floor of the bathroom – which was really awful – and just passed out.”
According to Davidson, everyone at the meeting had keys to the building, so it was normal for the last person to leave to lock up. Since Davidson was still in the restroom when the meeting ended, his coworkers all ended up leaving him there alone.
“Eventually – not smart looking back at it – I decided I was going to go home,” he said. “I thought I’d feel better if I went home.”
While driving home, Davidson said he had to pull his car off the road several times.
“I thought I was going to sleep, but I was just passing out (from blood loss),” he said. “I made it home and laid on the couch – I felt a lot better when I was laying flat because the blood was balancing itself between all my extremities.”
Having fallen asleep early, Davidson woke up around midnight feeling like he needed to throw up again.
“I was in complete darkness at this point, and I threw up,” he said. “My significant other at the time turned on the lights and all I hear is her start screaming because it’s like a murder scene. There was just blood everywhere.”
Davidson and his significant other called the paramedics, who transported him to the Ascension St. Vincent’s East Emergency Room. This choice of hospitals, Davidson said, was fate.
While in the emergency room, Davidson met a nurse named Tucker, who would later serve as Davidson’s main inspiration to go to nursing school, himself.
“We kind of had a bromance going; he was just a really cool guy and very down to earth,” Davidson said. “He was really helpful and really good about making me feel better, because I didn’t know it was nearly as bad as it was. He was fantastic.”
Medical staff gave Davidson a couple units of blood and, noticing his levels were still low, decided to admit him to the hospital and schedule an endoscopy for the next morning.
After the endoscopy, doctors thought Davidson likely had a small perforation in his intestines. He was held for observation in the hospital’s 5 West unit.
While in 5 West, Davidson told the staff he needed to use the restroom, so they brought him a bedpan. What happened next canceled all plans for him to be released the following day.
“I knew there was something wrong,” he said. And there was: once again, blood was everywhere. “They rushed me into emergency surgery. While on the table, I ended up coding three times because of blood loss … but they ended up bringing me back.”
Davidson was in the hospital a total of 17 days due to massive ulcers that had ruptured in his duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. He ended up needing multiple procedures over the next few months, but when all was said and done, Davidson knew the path his life would take next.
“As soon as I came out of the hospital, I knew I wanted to be a nurse,” he said. “The nurses there (at Ascension St. Vincent’s East) … it was amazing to me how good they were at making people not think about what’s going on. They were just amazing, and I thought, that’s the affect that I want to have on people.”
Not only did Davidson know without a doubt what he wanted to do with his life, but he also knew with 100% conviction where he wanted to do it.
“For me, there wasn’t any other hospital or any other place to work,” he said. “It was always going to be St. Vincent’s East ER.”
Before going to nursing school, there were several things Davidson needed to do to pave the way. He immediately began rearranging his life with his heart set on his new goal.
“My driving force for everything I did was to get back in school,” he said. “I was in school by the end of 2019, a year later.”
Davidson graduated from Jefferson State Community College in December 2022 with his associate degree in nursing. He now works as a registered nurse (RN) at the Ascension St. Vincent’s East emergency room, while also working on his BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) degree at Jacksonville State University.
“To me, it was like a calling (to go back to Ascension St. Vincent’s East),” he said. “I had several other job offers, including UAB Trauma/Burn, which is where I did my precepting, but there was really no other place for me besides Ascension St. Vincent’s East. I literally would not be here if it wasn’t for Ascension, so when it came time … I felt like I owed them my life because they gave me that second chance.”
When Davidson graduated from Jeff State, he gave a speech at the end of the graduation ceremony about the power nurses have, especially when it comes to the people in their care.
“The most addictive kind of power in the world is to be able to help somebody going through something,” he said. “It never gets old. … I feel like I have a chance to make a difference every single night at Ascension.”