Nurses

Last week, I ended up in the hospital having to have a sooner than expected gallbladder surgery. Because I am a bit medically complicated, this "23 hour" procedure turned into an almost 6 day stay at River Region.

For me, hospital stays always boil down to one thing. 

The nursing care. 

During this stay, my nursing care was absolutely exceptional. First was Sharon, who worked to get me settled in despite not one, but two codes called that afternoon on my floor. The next day, as I was trying to get dietary to send up something I could eat, (Jello!)  the nurse I called "Sic em' Sheila" had the dietary manager come talk to me personally. Anita, who is not even a floor nurse anymore, came and finally got my new IV started after others could not get my notoriously difficult veins to cooperate. The day of surgery, I had a wonderful nurse, Mioshae, who knew firsthand what it was like to be on the "other side" as a kidney transplant patient herself. Nurse Debra stole me an extra pillow to help make that miserable bed tolerable. And it was quite easy to remember nurse Karen's name.  Saturday night, when the computers were down, I had the old school "dream team" of Sandra the nurse, and Barbara the aide,  who went back to paper and pen with no problems. 

I met many other wonderful people during my stay, but they will have to wait for another post. This one is for the the real hospital rock stars. Those nurses!