Diane Foxen RN, Sunnyvale California
I've been called a hero. Told I have a good heart. Asked why I would go work long hours for no pay. This story tells it all.
While in Baton Rouge I worked at Earl K Long hospital in the NICU. I bonded with this little 23- weeker born 17 weeks to soon in New Orleans. His mom was evacuated to Texas and he had no one to hold him and love on him but us nurses. After what he had been through and survived he needed love. He was stranded in one of the hospitals that was last to be evacuated. The medical director tried with the help of a nurse to get him to two other hospitals hoping they were open, but not knowing for sure since they had no communications.
Picture this: Nurse paddling canoe, her passengers an M.D. hand ventilating this little baby now 7 weeks old and a mother cradling her baby next to her skin to keep it warm. She waded through 3-4 feet of water to get to her evacuated infant. The nurse paddles 1/2 mile to a hospital to find it was evacuated, than she paddles another 3/4 mile to another hospital to find they can't possibly take another patient. So off they are back to the starting point to wait for someone to rescue them. At night out on the parking deck where they evacuated to to be safe from the looters in the hospital they were shot at when they used their flashlights to check on patients. These humans who never left their post are the real heros.
This story was told to me by the nurses in the NICU at Earl K Long. They said when the M.D. came to the Earl to find his patients.he saw this little survivor and broke down crying and said, That's my baby, He made it." Because of these heros I was able to give much needed care and love to this little survivor. I am proud to say two of my co-workers at Good Samaritan in San Jose NICU Lindy and Cathy followed in my footsteps and just returned home. What great people I work with. You can make a difference, you just have to start somewhere and risk something.
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