VR Helps Alexander Reach Career Goals

Millicent Alexander has learned to deal with life’s pitfalls and come up smiling.

The 35-year-old Camden resident came to VR in 2001, afraid she was about to lose her medical insurance.

She’d been diagnosed with lupus when she was 23 and had a kidney transplant at 28. She was receiving a Social Security Disability Insurance check, but her husband’s employer was about to change insurance companies and she wasn’t sure she’d be covered.

Her husband’s new insurance did cover her medical needs but Alexander wasn’t ready to go to work. Both her parents had had strokes and needed her care.

She had been working at a drug store since 1989, but had to quit to go on dialysis in 1993. She went back to work for a little while, but then had to quit again for the transplant of a kidney donated by her brother.

She was interested in medical transcription and her VR counselor, Pam Company, talked her into going to school. Company helped her work on her typing skills and she enrolled in Central Carolina Tech in the spring of 2002 and finished the course by the end of the year.

Alexander’s own health problems and those of her parents intervened and the road to a job took a detour. She continued to look for work off and on as her personal situation allowed, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2006 that she found success.

Her mother’s doctor needed help in the pharmacy. Alexander is working full-time as a pharmacy technician at the Lugoff practice and has plans to enroll in the pharmacy technician course at Midlands Technical College.

Her parents are living nearby and her mother has adapted to her paralysis so she can cook and take care of herself.

If it hadn’t been for Company, Alexander said, “I probably wouldn’t have a job today. She actually called the supervisor and not many people will do that for you.”

Company said she and Alexander went to high school together.

“She’s the same person today as she was then,” Company said. “Whenever you meet her, she’s smiling.”

She said Alexander is one of the “most motivated people I’ve ever known. She follows through with everything.”

Alexander continues to live with the effects of the lupus and she’ll always have to take anti-rejection drugs for her new kidney.

But she’s philosophical about it and her basic good nature keeps her going.

“I’ve been through a lot,” she said, “but it’s helped me grow into a stronger person.”