Your mom was quite the nurse Chris! Thank you for sharing that, would have been something to see her in action!
I don't have any good storied about interacting with leadership. Most of mine are of the "awww" or "wow" variety. Those little moments that make up for day after day of working your tuckus off.
One of the best was this family that moved from Colorado to Oregon with a baby daughter that had some syndrome that I can't remember. I believe the husband was shifting jobs, but part of their move was making sure they were close to a children's hospital that could meet their needs as their child hadn't left the hospital since she'd been born. When they flew out they, they flew with one of her nurses from Colorado to care for her on the flight. These people made great connections with the people caring for them.
I ended up being one of their primary nurses. They had requested a few of us be assigned as primary so they would usually have someone that knew their child well. This wasn't usual, but we did have a few patients this happened for. Anyway, this baby was maybe 2-3 months old and always connected to oxygen and usually connected to a feeding pump. Long story short. It was my goal to be the one to wean this baby off the oxygen. Not something nobody else could do, but I was a little more aggressive with it and spent more time than others trying to get it to happen. One day while mom was out doing laundry or something, I was able to get her weaned off and into one of the swing chairs and put her out at the nurses' station to hang with us. Mom comes back, walks right past the station and into her room. Wait a few seconds, out she comes with this look of "where is she?". Not worried, but know there was nothing planned for that day. I just point over to her swinging away, not connected to a big bottle of oxygen and looking just like any other baby. Man, the look on mom's face was what it's all about. The smile, the tears, still gets me choked up. Seeing her baby free from all that for the first time.
Rough ending though. She did pass away about a year later. Her mom ended up organizing a fund raiser for research. We did a Portland to Coast relay run/walk. Her team was made of me as the driver and a bunch of other nurses that took care of them. I drove a van and we did a relay walk for over 24hrs from Portland to the Oregon coast. They continued that for a few more years, and I still have a little stuffed dog that she gave me shortly after that day at the nurse's station.
I don't have any good storied about interacting with leadership. Most of mine are of the "awww" or "wow" variety. Those little moments that make up for day after day of working your tuckus off.
One of the best was this family that moved from Colorado to Oregon with a baby daughter that had some syndrome that I can't remember. I believe the husband was shifting jobs, but part of their move was making sure they were close to a children's hospital that could meet their needs as their child hadn't left the hospital since she'd been born. When they flew out they, they flew with one of her nurses from Colorado to care for her on the flight. These people made great connections with the people caring for them.
I ended up being one of their primary nurses. They had requested a few of us be assigned as primary so they would usually have someone that knew their child well. This wasn't usual, but we did have a few patients this happened for. Anyway, this baby was maybe 2-3 months old and always connected to oxygen and usually connected to a feeding pump. Long story short. It was my goal to be the one to wean this baby off the oxygen. Not something nobody else could do, but I was a little more aggressive with it and spent more time than others trying to get it to happen. One day while mom was out doing laundry or something, I was able to get her weaned off and into one of the swing chairs and put her out at the nurses' station to hang with us. Mom comes back, walks right past the station and into her room. Wait a few seconds, out she comes with this look of "where is she?". Not worried, but know there was nothing planned for that day. I just point over to her swinging away, not connected to a big bottle of oxygen and looking just like any other baby. Man, the look on mom's face was what it's all about. The smile, the tears, still gets me choked up. Seeing her baby free from all that for the first time.
Rough ending though. She did pass away about a year later. Her mom ended up organizing a fund raiser for research. We did a Portland to Coast relay run/walk. Her team was made of me as the driver and a bunch of other nurses that took care of them. I drove a van and we did a relay walk for over 24hrs from Portland to the Oregon coast. They continued that for a few more years, and I still have a little stuffed dog that she gave me shortly after that day at the nurse's station.
