Second acts: Nursing as a second career

Bill Kenny, RN

Then: Television Sitcom Writer
Now: Allergy-Immunology Clinic

When Bill Kenny considered switching careers from successful TV sitcom writer to nursing, he thought he might be crazy. So he talked to Jane, a nurse and his best friend from college, where he had never even taken a science course. “I said, ‘Don’t laugh—I’m thinking about getting a nursing degree.’ She didn’t laugh; she said it was a terrific idea. Then I told my parents, and they didn’t laugh, either.”

Interestingly, the only people who thought it was strange were Kenny’s Hollywood friends, which probably says more about the insular world of entertainment than about Kenny, who had invested more than 25 years in his writing career. After college, he started as a page at NBC in New York City and worked his way up to research analyst. When the opportunity to enter a company-wide writing contest arose, he took it—and won first place with his script for The Golden Girls! He later moved to Los Angeles and in no time his credits began mounting: Designing Women, Baghdad Café, Sister Kate, Amen, Mr. President, Blossom, Pyramid, Big Brother and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

In the midst of all this success, Kenny was diagnosed twice—in 1990 and 1993—with testicular cancer. “When I was pulling the IV pole behind me, going through radiation and chemo, I started thinking that if I got better—and I didn’t know if I would—I didn’t want to be stuck behind a computer all day.”

Thankfully, he did recover, and though he returned to writing, Kenny kept thinking about nursing. “The nurses were the ones who pulled me through, came into my room at night, kept me company, comforted me and cared for me.” He started volunteering at the same Wellness Community that had helped him cope with his cancer. “Because of what I’d gone through, I knew how to help people deal with the news of a diagnosis. I found it very fulfilling, and that experience pretty much cemented everything I’d been thinking about nursing.”

Kenny took his prerequisites one at a time, thinking that if he didn’t like it, he could easily stop. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. But he enjoyed it to the hilt. “Writing is totally subjective; there’s no right or wrong. But science is precise, and I was totally into it.”

Kenny enrolled in a one-year accelerated program and got his nursing degree from Mount St. Mary’s in Los Angeles when he was 45. He started work in the Pediatric ICU at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and stayed for three years. “I was so fortunate. I got excellent training and worked with wonderful nurses.”

For the past year and a half, Kenny has been in the Allergy-Immunology Clinic at Children’s Hospital. “In the ICU, I noticed I most enjoyed interacting with my patients. The clinic is perfect because I can build relationships—I see the same kids every month and I can track their progress and follow their lives. No TV show can compare to nursing. It’s so real, so genuine, so honest, and I love that. My cancer brought me many gifts. Among them was permission to walk away from Hollywood and into nursing, which is actually the best reality show on earth.”

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