Linsey Manalia Blythe graduated from Gillespie High School in 2008, earning a Michael Valenti Memorial Scholarship from The Partnership for Educational Excellence. She used the $500 award toward tuition at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS).
Linsey completed a bachelor’s degree in educational psychology in 2012 at UIS and then undertook the study of diagnostic medical sonography at Sanford-Brown College in Fenton, Missouri, graduating in 2014.
Today Linsey is a Maternal and Fetal Medicine (MFM) Sonographer at the perinatal center of Mercy Hospital in St. Louis and at its off-site location in Maryville, Illinois.
“I perform high risk obstetric (OB) ultrasounds,” she says. “The patients I see are usually experiencing high risk pregnancies due to maternal and/or fetal complications. The exams I perform throughout the day range from first trimester ultrasounds to anatomy scans to weekly follow-up ultrasounds on patients in their third trimester.”
Linsey says that one of the reasons she loves her job is “because every patient, every baby, every situation is different. I never know what my day will be like.”
She plans to further her career by becoming “a more specialized OB sonographer.” Specifically, Linsey will become certified in the Fetal Echocardiography Registry.
Linsey is the daughter of Lonnie and Rhonda Manalia of rural Plainview. They are the proprietors of Fema’s Catering in Benld.