Nurse practitioner Arlene “Mae” Bautista often laughs at how far she has come geographically and professionally from where her life’s journey began.
Mae grew up in metro Manila, on the outskirts of the Philippine capital, the oldest of five sisters. As a child, she imagined a future in engineering. Nursing, she admits, was a practical decision.
“I am Filipino,” she said matter-of-factly. “In the Philippines, if you are a nurse, you can go abroad, earn more money and send money to your family. So it’s like, okay, I’ll just be a nurse.”
In 2007, she left home for the United States, trading a tropical climate for a very different life. She spent nearly three years in New York before deciding the cold – and the city’s stratospheric cost of living – were not for her.
“There’s no snow in the Philippines,” she said. “I just don’t want to wake up too early just so you can shovel your car out of the snow.”
By 2009, Mae had settled in Tucson, nearly 8,000 miles and 22 hours of travel from where she started. Arizona would become both her professional proving ground and her adopted home.
Bautista worked for a decade as an emergency room nurse, drawn to the pace and pressure. “Oh, I love the adrenaline rush,” she said. “It’s the excitement of it.”
The move toward becoming a nurse practitioner was almost accidental. While working alongside a colleague who was pursuing a Master’s degree, Bautista explored the same program – and was quickly accepted.
“All of a sudden they told me, ‘Okay, you’re in for the program,’” she recalled. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So I just went ahead with it.”
Three years later, she had her NP degree and greater autonomy in patient care, which has become something she values deeply.
“I can decide on what I think might be best for my patients,” she said. “I’m part of that decision-making process.”
Today at Wound Center of Tucson working with Dr. Jeff Monash, Bautista focuses on home health, bringing specialized wound care to patients who are too weak or immobile to travel. She says she finds the work hands-on and intensely personal.
“You get to the patient, you see that wound – very dirty, oozing,” she said. “And then you leave the house with the wound being clean. And you do that all with your hands. That’s rewarding for me.”
For Bautista, the distance from Manila to Tucson has involved much more than plane flights and thousands of miles. It is a measure of sacrifice, ambition and service. And it stands as a reminder that a simple decision made for family can evolve into a calling built on skill, creativity and compassion.
Mae goes back to the Philippines every six or seven years when finances allow, reconnecting with sisters, relatives and the place that shaped her. But Tucson is home now, and the patients she serves each day are the clearest proof of how far she has traveled – and why.