Staff Profile: Estrella “Ester” Alejandrino and Susan Freyberg

Estrella “Ester” Alejandrino and Susan Freyberg, registered nurses and case managers at Mission Hospice, both grew up and received their initial nursing training in their native Philippine Islands, coming to the United States as young women to start their careers.

But their paths to Mission Hospice have been different.

Ester clearly remembers when she decided to become a nurse: she was only 5 years old when her aunt – a nurse – noticed that her leg was seriously infected.

“If she hadn’t seen me, I would have lost the leg,” she recalled. “I wanted to be able to help other people the way my aunt had helped me.”

For Susan, it was a little different. “It was my mother who encouraged me to become a nurse,” she said, noting that many Filipino parents saw nursing as an opportunity for their daughters to travel to the U.S. 

It turned out to be the right decision. “I actually grew up wanting to be a lawyer, but I found my true calling in hospice care,” Susan recalled.

Ester, who came to the U.S. in 1970, worked in Canada for a few months before starting her U.S. career, working in New York, Texas, Washington, Missouri, Alaska, Colorado and California. She also visited her family in Manila, helping to support six nieces and a nephew and eventually bringing her brother and his children to the Bay Area.

She admits that the transition to hospice nursing was challenging at first.

“Hospice care is emotionally intense,” she said, “but it’s a comfort to know that we can help relieve suffering at the end of life. Our patients are prepared. They have someone to be with them, to give them medication and to care for them. I hope for the same compassionate end-of-life care that we give our patients.”

Susan earned a master’s degree in nursing from Emory in Atlanta, and then worked in hospitals in New York, Virginia and the San Francisco Bay Area before joining the corporate world. She worked in product safety compliance at Syntex and clinical data review at Pacific Research Associates, as well as on stroke research at Stanford Hospitals. While she enjoyed the excitement of clinical research, she turned to hospice nursing for the one-on-one patient interaction.

Like all Mission Hospice case managers, Susan grows close to her patients and has many fond memories of her visits.

“Serving patients and their families is the most rewarding part of my job,” she said.  “We work with every patient and family to help them understand the disease process and make the patient as comfortable as possible.”

Susan joined Mission Hospice about three years ago, and her daughter Frances joined as director of development earlier this year.

“We’re both so busy that we don’t see each other often, but it’s nice when she comes by my office and blows me a kiss,” she said.

Mission Hospice has six case managers. All are registered nurses who are a vital link in delivering quality hospice services. They meet with patients and families to assess each situation, and then work with an interdisciplinary team (physicians, social workers, home health aides, chaplain and volunteers) to establish and implement an individualized treatment plan.

Susan Freyberg (left) and Ester Alejandrino