She served for almost six years. The work was hard on her body, and the physical labor hurt her back, much of it due to her need to fit in. "Especially being a female, I think we have to kind of prove ourselves to be at the level of the guys. … I feel that I definitely had to grow a thick skin." Carolina recalls the jeering from male sailors, and the unwanted attention she received simply for being a woman. But she believed she had to endure it all. The push to power through is common, says Dr. Pamela Fullerton, a bicultural clinical counselor with Puerto Rican and German heritage. "We see this story line in us Latinas … constantly trying to prove our worth." 100LatinaBirthdays.com
She served for almost six years. The work was hard on her body, and the physical labor hurt her back, much of it due to her need to fit in. "Especially being a female, I think we have to kind of prove ourselves to be at the level of the guys. … I feel that I definitely had to grow a thick skin." Carolina recalls the jeering from male sailors, and the unwanted attention she received simply for being a woman. But she believed she had to endure it all.
The push to power through is common, says Dr. Pamela Fullerton, a bicultural clinical counselor with Puerto Rican and German heritage. "We see this story line in us Latinas … constantly trying to prove our worth."
100LatinaBirthdays.com
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, and the Chicago Foundation for Women, the Community Memorial Foundation, and Visiting Nurses Association. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series’ fiscal sponsor.
It’s early afternoon in downtown Chicago and my Uber driver is looking for a safe place to drop me off near a bridge on one of the busiest downtown streets, East Wacker Drive.
VDC: The Vietnam Memorial. Driver: It should be over here. … Okay. I can get out right here. No problem.]
The double-decker bridge is decorated with ornate Art Deco sculptures that mark the entrance to the main gateway that connects the waterfront. There’s a constant stream of cars.
[Sound of cars passing]
I am looking for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a centerpiece of Chicago’s popular Riverwalk.
I’m calling Carolina Jimenez, who’s asked to meet near the Memorial. She is a retired Navy corpsman – or medical specialist – who has agreed to share part of her experiences after serving.
VDC: So where where's the memorial?
JIMENEZ: Oh, it's down that way.
VDC: Okay, I'm going to follow you.
VDC: Yeah, that sounds good.
It’s a sunny 40-degree day, save for the biting wind. It’s windier the closer I get to the waterfront. Carolina and I find each other on the pedestrian bridge connecting the waterfront to the other bank, where she guides me to the memorial. Her waist-long dark hair, parted down the middle, flutters over her windbreaker.
JIMENEZ: This is actually the route I take to school cuz my school's, like, right over there.]
She waves her hand to the West. We’re a 20-minute walk away from the Pacific College of Health and Science - Chicago where she is completing a doctorate in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.
Carolina smiles. She is visibly at ease, taking in the sights as she looks ahead to her final year in grad school.
JIMENEZ 1: Sometimes I get here early, and then I just walk, right before clinic or class, and it helps kind of set the mood for the day.
Heading down a set of stairs, we arrive at the Veteran’s Memorial, a large crest adorns it. This is one of her favorite places to pause and reflect.
A dark gray slab of stone bears the inscription: “Chicago Remembers” with a list of 2,936 Illinois veterans’ names. At the center of the memorial is a rectangular fountain …
JIMENEZ : Being near the water, it's calming…It just helps me clear my head.
My depression and anxiety gets really high, then I start going to somewhere that's nature or water …
That’s why she likes to meander through the one-and-a-half mile path. The Riverwalk is flanked by some of the high rise buildings that shape the city’s memorable skyline.
It’s a busy Sunday. Parents look after their young children, friends snap photos after brunch and runners speed by.
Even in the brisk Spring weather, being outside helps to clear her head.
JIMENEZ: I'm in my last year. So, the burnout is very real
She says focusing on a slow stroll or the rays of sun helps ground her. Holistic health is central for Carolina, in life and in career. As we walk past the trees and rippling water, I learn that her own health challenges inspired the decision to combine public health expertise with traditional Chinese medicine.
Carolina has a calm confidence, something she has honed in over the years. Last year, she was featured in the Chicago Veterans magazine for her dedication to veterans’ health.
JIMENEZ : I'm doing an internship with um Jesse Brown at the VA and then with RUSH, they have an oncology clinic that they do acupuncture.
VDC: And you sound excited.
JIMENEZ: Yes
Jessie Brown is the Jesse Brown Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Rush is Rush University’s RUSH MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Carolina gets energized talking about what she wants to do in health. For her, learning as much as she can has always been significant. After high school, with a college scholarship in hand, she planned to go pre-med. But says she soon realized the school she chose wasn’t a good fit.
JIMENEZ: I remember telling my mom that I wanted to go somewhere else to a different school, and, but she said ‘Well, they paid the school, like, they paid for the school. You had, like, a scholarship and stuff,’ So it was difficult, and honestly, like, I didn't apply to any other school cuz I didn't want it to be a financial burden for my mom.
Carolina needed to find another way. That’s when she considered the military. Both of her brothers were in the Navy.
JIMENEZ: I never thought about joining.
VDC: Um Never?
JIMENEZ: No.
Then she learned about the medical training opportunities through the Navy Hospital Corpsman program.
JIMENEZ : I've always wanted to be in the medical field. And so, which is why I joined the Navy to be a corpsman. And I figured, I mean, I'll go get experience first and then go back and go to medical school. …
Plus it could offset school costs.
JIMENEZ: So I went down to the recruiting office and I told them … tell me what you can about Corpsman. And they wanted to give me information about other jobs. I'm like, no, I want to be a Corpsman. That's what I want to do.
She was just 19 when she enlisted, the same age her mom was when she moved from Jalisco, Mexico to Chicago. Her life quickly changed then, and she would, for years after, endure the toll her enlistment would have on her – physically and mentally.
Six weeks after signing up, Carolina was off to bootcamp at the naval station in the Great Lakes. After that, she was stationed on the Naval ships in San Diego, where she worked in food service and hauled heavy boxes up and down stairs. She remembers the shock of the San Diego skyline.
JIMENEZ: At that point is when I, like, it hit me and I'm, like, I'm not home anymore.
She served for almost six years. The work was hard on her body, and the physical labor hurt her back, much of it due to her need to fit in.
JIMENEZ: Especially being a female, I think we have to kind of prove ourselves to be at the level of the guys. … I feel that I definitely had to grow a thick skin.
Carolina recalls the jeering from male sailors, and the unwanted attention she received simply for being a woman. But she believed she had to endure it all.
The push to power through is common, says Dr. Pamela Fullerton, a bicultural clinical counselor with Puerto Rican and German heritage.
FULLERTON: We see this story line in us Latinas … constantly trying to prove our worth.
In her private practice, Dr. Fullerton serves Latinos, veterans, and their families. At some point, she saw a growing need among veterans.
FULLERTON: When we started to take military insurance, we made sure that we were properly educated. And working with the military population increased our professional development around working with this population. And that's where we are today.
Latino health professionals, research suggests, are lacking among mental health practitioners, physicians, and nurses. Public health studies show that Naval cadets, officers and soldiers are more prone to develop disabilities linked to back injuries – such as herniated discs.
Women are even more likely to develop these disorders, an International Public Health Journal systematic review revealed. Dr. Fullerton put it like this:
FULLERTON: So you're conditioning these individuals to be solely hyper-focused on the mission. And they lose sight of who they are as individuals. Now, you transition into civilian life, you don't need to think about the mission anymore, but you're so conditioned. How do you know then to transition, to start focusing on yourself? How do you know when your pain is really there?
Carolina’s pain started before she rejoined civilian life. She was diagnosed with a herniated disc while enlisted, and had surgery on both knees and hips. Today, she lives with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition that requires physical therapy, as well as stress and pain management.
But four years into her enlistment, getting properly diagnosed was a trial itself.
JIMENEZ: I was dealing with a lot of pain and just doctors could not figure it out. And at some point they said it was psychosomatic that it was like all in my head
Though her military career ended 15 years ago, she remembers the exhaustion and the body aches.
JIMENEZ: Everywhere. De la cabeza a los pies. Everywhere.
Until she met one doctor who finally recognized fibromyalgia in her symptoms.
JIMENEZ: There was this female doctor, this woman doctor that she had experience with it. And so she sent me to rheumatology to get confirmed. And and so they ended up confirming it, and they diagnosed me with it.
Carolina filed for a military health discharge – which can be used as part of a disability claim. The application includes a 16-page self-assessment, thoroughly detailing each ailment or previous illness as well as explaining their tobacco or alcohol use.
JIMENEZ: I was in a lot of pain. I wasn't able to do the same work anymore. And when I submitted the paperwork they're like, ‘Well no, you're fit for full.’ … Like you you can basically like do everything
Even with a doctor’s diagnosis, she was denied. So she appealed with full medical documentation. She was eventually granted a health discharge.
JANET LOPEZ: You have the services, but it's very frustrating to them to go through the process.
That’s Janet Lopez, a researcher and assistant professor who has worked with the VA on identifying health needs among Latino veterans. She says in some cases, people give up on accessing their services because it is so complicated.
LOPEZ: The major one … they felt that there was no information provided upon separation, or if it was provided, it was just too … confusing for them to understand the structure of the Veterans Health Administration.
A recent study supports what Lopez has documented, that Latino veterans tend to rate their experiences within VA health systems as poor.
Here’s Elis Fernandez Payne, who recently retired as an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel after serving 27 years. She is also a nurse practitioner, with a focus on women’s health:
PAYNE: Health care is really at a crisis right now. We have a shortage of providers. … Healthcare resources across the country are not great.
Elis recalls her own difficulty transitioning from active duty to civilian life. Military life has a set structure, so preventative care or annual check-ups are usually managed for those enlisted. When veterans rejoin civilian life, the barriers are a mashup of problems: long wait times, confusing insurance restrictions, delayed call-backs to schedule appointments or a lack of pain treatment. These issues tend to be worse for Latinos.
LEBEAU: There's this, like, funny phrase that people use where it's, like, if you've been to one VA, you've been to one VA, which means that anytime you go to one of these – a clinic, a center, a larger hospital, not a VA – your experience at that place is going to be completely different than your experience at another one.
That’s Kelsea LeBeau, a social scientist at Vanderbilt University. She co-authored a scoping review with Janet Lopez on rural Latino veteran healthcare gaps. They assessed that it’s hard to find targeted, comprehensive research specifically on this group.
LOPEZ 3: Past experience, navigating negative experiences during active duty, witnessing racism in the system. So, those are things, like, that they describe as barriers to engaging with the veterans healthcare administration. … maybe we need health navigators for these veterans.
Even the VA’s latest health equity report underlines the problems minority veterans face. Latino veterans tend to be younger and slightly more likely to have a service-related disability, which may indicate greater care-coordination needs.
But the report shows that when Latino veterans made their appointments, they tended to wait longer than 15 minutes after their initial appointment before seeing a provider. Compared with white veterans, Latino veterans were not as satisfied with VA staffers’ helpfulness. Other notable issues: veterans 45-65 were less likely to be screened for depression and receive timely follow-ups on test results, which contributes to delays in diagnosing and treating serious medical issues. Similar to what Carolina experienced.
Fibromyalgia flare ups can be unpredictable, ranging from body stiffness and pain to executive dysfunction – or difficulty making decisions.
JIMENEZ: And again because fibromyalgia is not something that you can actually … physically test for or you can actually see. It's just things that people are experiencing.
After diagnosis, Carolina’s doctors prescribed Cymbalta – a prescription medication that targets nerve pain. But she didn’t like how it made her feel. Groggy. Not like herself.
So, she saves meds for the days where she needs it most. When Carolina researched what else could give her some relief, she landed on alternative therapies.
One of these, acupuncture, worked wonders in reducing her pain.
That led her to pursue a doctoral degree in acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. Acupuncture, she says, is a specialty that is out of reach for many.
JIMENEZ: Along the way, I ended up working with the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center with their whole health program and acupuncture was part of that program. So, I knew I wanted to go back and do something and there was an acupuncturist … that worked in the hall and I picked his brain about it. So, then I applied, I got in and … everything just fell in place.
In 2025, federal agencies removed some health research on ethnic populations from federal websites, later partially restoring some web pages and data sets. However some of the data collection relevant to minority health has been paused.
When I reached out to multiple people at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, most never responded. A regional health care ethicist with the VA did reply on LinkedIn but seemed hesitant to speak. He wrote:
QUOTE – “Thank you for the invitation, but as a current VA employee and in the current political climate, I would not think it wise for me to comment to a journalist. I would refer you to public affairs.” – END QUOTE
Though officials at the VA did not reply to my requests, the available research is clear. Disparities in quality health care have been most pronounced among Black and Latino veterans for decades, with Latinos facing notable gaps in diabetes control and some experience-of-care metrics.
Lopez and LeBeau say that not enough research targets this growing population. And various studies suggest that such information on racial inequities in health likely underestimates the impact and severity.
LeBeau explains:
LEBEAU: Where do you put the money? Where do you put the resources? Where do you do research to help the most people? Not necessarily always to help the people most in need. And I think that you find that in every research setting. … with female veterans, they're just such a low percentage, even though it's rising that I, and they have such different experiences than male veterans. It's been hard for that population to get the same attention and resource provision as the majority of male veterans.
That gap in usable information makes it harder for decisionmakers to know what conditions afflict certain groups the most, or which health programs to target or invest in.
FULLERTON: Latina veterans, women, female veterans in general, very unique, interesting population in that they don't get studied a lot. No surprise, because it is a male-dominated field, in white male dominated field.
But a new coalition of public health experts banded together to create the National Hispanic Health Research Institute, a community research and data hub.
LEBEAU: This has happened before, it's going to happen again and funding continues. We persevere, things are still funded, research still continues and you just have to find creative ways through that.
The most recent national VA health equity report found that Latino veterans are slightly more likely to have a service-connected disability. Overall, Latino veterans tend to face delays for routine and preventative care, which is key to avoiding health complications later on.
Nationwide, there are roughly 200,000 Latina veterans, a small percentage of which live in Illinois.
FULLERTON: We see issues in that employment space, in that relational space, in the mental health space. What about if they received some kind of physical issue? And they now have physical disabilities, right? Transitioning … into normal life again, civilian life, right? So, it's a lot. And then you add the complexity of finding services right away when you need it. Rough.
There was already a shortage of Latino health care workers: only 7-percent of physicians are Latinos.
FULLERTON: Is there enough of us doing it? No. Literally, a presentation that Dr. Forman and I made was called Call to Action: Serving the Military Population. It is a call to action. Where are our people to help us? There's not enough supporting this group.
In grad school, former Navy corpsman Carolina Jimenez is connecting the dots.
JIMENEZ: I've been reading a lot that women … their pain gets downplayed a lot … even for … procedures.
Reentry to civilian life means the veterans must seek and schedule their own health care. It is an obstacle course, even if they decide to stick with a VA health provider or find a community care clinic.
FULLERTON: When you call, schedule an appointment and all of a sudden they say, "By the way, you won't be able to be seen for three months, you know, whatever the case may be is two months, six months." … You say, well, okay, I guess I'll just wait and um take that appointment, you waive your right to then see an outside provider. That's part of a larger network called the Community Care Network. And when you waive your right then, let's say you wait two months, but your appointment is still another 30 days away, but you literally can't take it anymore. I can't take it. I need to see someone. And you decide to go just see someone on the outside. Well, now the VA isn't going to pay for that. And they don't explain that.
Coordinating care across health systems is a persistent issue.
So in many cases, health is put on the back burner if scheduling appointments gets chaotic, Lopez says.
LOPEZ: There is cultural factors that they describe … the perception of being healthy … the Hispanic centric values like … ‘I don't have time to be sick. I have to keep working.’ Like, you know, we're hard working people; we can't, like, stop and, like, ‘I don't want to be seen as weak.’ And that military mindset, too, like, you know you got to keep going
Filling out paperwork, in Carolina’s case, was just the first step in the dizzying maze that is the VA health network. And the system doesn’t always work in the veteran’s favor.
An Office of the Inspector General investigation from 2022 determined that nearly 70% of the VA’s processors mishandled disability claims.
[SNIPPET: another report published last year revealed that veterans were being required to attend unwarranted medical re-examinations although VBA may require veterans to be reexamined to verify disability existence or severity unnecessary reexaminations subject veterans to undo hardship waste money and slow claims processing we found vba's practices were inconsistent with procedures and estimated that staff were erroneously establishing dates for reexaminations about 66% of the time]
These staffers routinely leave out crucial details, which leads to treatment delays and sometimes misdiagnosis. And sometimes, life gets in the way.
For Carolina, the life she’d built was crumbling around her at the same time she was dealing with chronic pain and finding treatment.
She says her marriage was falling apart.
JIMENEZ: Me dealing with my medical issues and everything; and then him dealing with, like, the early separation. I think both of us were dealing with things that we didn't communicate well.
After 11 years in California, she made the choice to move back to Chicago.
Going from active duty to veteran comes with a whirlwind of change, nurse Elis Fernandez Payne says, especially for those who have made big life transitions, such as a divorce or moving cross-country.
She can relate.
PAYNE: You kind of take a step back and realize, okay, well, I just went through a huge life transition of coming out of the military. When you look at that crisis list of 25 things that humans go through, I was pretty much checking off all of them in that short period of time. Yeah, so I think a lot of it is just having some self-awareness too.
The number of women and Latino veterans is expected to increase in the next 20 years. The Pew Research Center predicts that the share of Latino veterans will nearly double by 2048.
People I talked to agree that VA services will need to become more attuned to the needs of this rising swath of service personnel. Otherwise, the complications many experience from serving may worsen. For instance, 30 percent of women veterans stop going to VA health centers within three years, the National Survey of Women Veterans highlighted. However, the survey was conducted 2008-2009, which was a long time ago. Many participants said they wanted to feel safe, heard and supported, but instead faced dismissive doctors and sometimes gender or racial discrimination in VA health centers.
Here’s Carolina.
JIMENEZ: The thing with … Western medicine that I didn't like is instead of all of them collaborating and be like okay we think this could be this, it was different providers. So, it was, like, different specialties and none of them actually talked to each other.
Dr. Fullerton and Elis Fernandez say the needs are dire – especially for Latinos who already experienced difficulties finding doctors they trust and therapists they could relate with. This is on top of the difficulty to even find doctors and therapists that take their insurance (VA insurance) – and can be seen in a timely manner.
Like Carolina, other active duty military members have been told they are fit for full service despite having a medical provider say otherwise. She is part of the growing Latino veteran population in Cook County, the second highest compared to other counties across Illinois.
As more Latinos move to Northern parts of the state and into Chicago’s western suburbs Carolina says they need culturally competent, holistic care because wellness goes beyond the clinic walls, and should help a patient’s health long term.
JIMENEZ: That's one of the reasons why I ended up going into this medicine because it does help with pain, along with mental health things, and just so many other things. … So, ideally, I want to work with veterans, and be able to help them deal with the things that they're dealing with. But at some point I also want to work with Latino neighborhoods.
For her, the pain, brain fog, and fatigue comes in waves, Carolina says. At one point during our first meet-up, we took a break. We sat in the car – no mic. She told me it was hard to put words together, and that the pain made it hard to think. So we paused and went to eat, to see if that would help. We stopped the interview altogether and picked back up later that week.
Carolina and I caught up two days after our first meeting at Riverwalk, at the aptly named Botanical Cafe on Lincoln Avenue. We sat on a vintage couch near a window, surrounded by lush monsteras and palms, a great contrast to the mint-colored walls.
Visibly relaxed, she rolled her shirt up and showed me her Wonder Woman tattoo on her left bicep. She loves comic books, and is a Comicon stan – costumes and all. Although the mic wasn’t rolling, I sensed that she finds solace in being creative and amongst the greenery. That, for her, is part of holistic wellness.
We get back to her vision for her future.
JIMENEZ: I do want to give part of that back to the community. I think part of it is just making it more accessible to the communities. I mean, there's a lot of Latino communities that have low low income. And so sometimes they're not able to to get those services.
In December – the same month as her 41st birthday – she will graduate as a doctor, weaving together her public health training with the alternative methods that helped her feel better.
JIMENEZ: Everything that I've done in my life has kind of led me to this point. …
JIMENEZ: I eventually want to open up my own practice and be able to treat a variety of people. I do want to work with veterans, and help support them with with everything that they deal with. But I also want to try to get back to the community somehow
As she revs up for graduation and her birthday on December 16, she gets in a positive mindset – reminiscing about last year’s festivities, which marked the end of her 30s.
JIMENEZ: I woke up pretty happy in the morning, and then I started taking selfies without makeup or anything. I'm like, this is 40.
Her birthday lands on the first day of las posadas – a traditional Mexican Christmas celebration that takes place over nine days. It’s a festive season already, so Carolina says her family never had to add another tradition around her birthday.
Her mom was the orchestrator. Carolina’s face lights up as she shares:
JIMENEZ: She would normally cook something and get us a cake.
Her favorite is chocolate cake, and among her mom’s dishes she loves...
JIMENEZ: pozole and chiladas and like albondigas … [Fade] Yeah. Yeah.
The food is what she missed most when she was deployed – aside from Chicago’s skyline – and what she relishes now that she’s back.
She says the military route was good for her. It stretched her, and exposed her to specialties in the medical field that she would have struggled to find in a traditional academic setting.
Plus, she found lifelong friends.
JIMENEZ: We became like a family.
From a mental health perspective, Dr. Fullerton says these community ties are key to a healthy life, especially given the unique challenges Latino veterans face.
FULLERTON: Part of our strength and our cultural wealth comes from community and community bonding.
Family and community ties have held Carolina together, it’s part of why she moved back to the Midwest. But she tends to bring the conversation back around to her mom. She credits her with pushing her and encouraging her to get where she is today.
Her mom embodied what it means to work hard.
She rattles off the multiple jobs her mom had to provide for her three kids: babysitter, restaurant cleaner, at a laundromat and, now, a manager at Palmer House – a four-star hotel.
She shares her hopes of seeing her mom finally taking a rest.
JIMENEZ: She keeps putting it off cuz she was saying, "Oh, July. Oh, no, January." And then she … keeps putting putting it off a little bit. And she joked around saying that her doctor told her not to retire yet because then she's not going to have anything to do later on.
Carolina says she thinks 2025 might be the year her mom retires, just in step with her own life transition.
JIMENEZ: My mom had to deal with so many things throughout her life and so she pushed me to be a stronger person and to not be so shy. And I think with that experience and then with the experience in the military, it helped me grow into the person I am.
CREDITS
100 Latina Birthdays is an original production of LWC Studios. It is made possible by grants from Healthy Communities Foundation, Kellogg Foundation, Woods Fund Chicago, The Field Foundation of Illinois, Pritzker Foundation, and The Chicago Foundation for Women, Chicago Community Trust, and Visiting Nurses Association. Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the series’ fiscal sponsor.
Juleyka Lantigua is the series creator, executive producer, and editor. This episode was reported by me, Vicky Diaz-Camacho. Mixing and sound design by Florence Barrau-Adams. Fendall Fulton fact checked it. Kori Doran is our marketing associate. Cover Art by Reyna Noriega.
For more information, resources, episode transcripts, and Spanish translations, visit 100latinabirthdays.com. That's one, zero, zero Latina birthdays dot com. Follow us on Instagram, X, and Facebook at 100 Latina Birthdays.
100 Latina Birthdays is an open source podcast. We encourage you to use our episodes and supporting materials in your classrooms, organizations, and anywhere they can compliment your work, and make an impact. You may rebroadcast parts of, or entire episodes, without permission. Just please drop us a line so we can keep track. Thank you for listening.
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