Children’s Hospital Nurse Manager
She wanted to be a blessing to somebody else, especially those who may be forgotten or abandoned. She had a sense of someone who had been helped.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
NF was adopted as a baby and spent her life, as her husband said later, “paying it forward” because she knew early on that she had been helped through her own life – especially by her adopting parents and by doctors and nurses who would provide treatment for her inherited, sickle cell disease.
TEEN YEARS
As a teenager, NF volunteered as a nurse’s aide at a general hospital for adults. Later, she worked as an aide at a children’s hospital.
With the experience of being around children and adults suffering from disease and injury, NF found her calling: helping people in distress, especially those who, like her, struggled with sickle cell anemia.
Editor – ‘Sickle cell disease’ is a group of blood disorders typically inherited. The most common type is sickle cell anemia, an abnormality in the oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin found in red blood cells. This leads to a rigid, sickle-like shape under certain circumstances. Problems in sickle cell disease typically begin around 5 to 6 months of age, such as attacks of pain, anemia, swelling in the hands and feet, bacterial infections, and possibly stroke. Long-tern pain may develop as those diagnosed get older. The average life expectancy in the developed world is 40 to 60 years.
Care of people diagnosed with sickle cell disease may include infection prevention with vaccination and antibiotics, high fluid intake, folic acid supplementation and pain medication. Other measures may involve blood transfusion. A small percentage of the afflicted can be cured by a transplant of bone marrow cells. As the science of medicine progresses, hopefully early intervention procedures will be developed to ease and extend the lives of those diagnosed with sickle cell disease.
EDUCATION
Knowing early on what she wanted to do as an adult, gave focus to NF as a student during her elementary, middle, and high school years. NF attended a public ‘magnet’ school for girls within a large city, where she excelled as a student, gaining admission to a top-rated university, where – with the financial support of a financial scholarship, she earned a Bachelor’s degree in nursing.
CAREER AS A CALLING MORE THAN A JOB
As a nurse, eventually a nurse manager within a hospital which devoted itself exclusively to children, NF was able to focus on young people in distress, especially those who struggled with sickle cell anemia. She spoke words of comfort, with extra believability for her patients, due to their shared disease.
To distract patients from their current symptoms, NF tried to help them plan for a fulfilling future.
When one of her young patients was forced to spend her senior high school prom night in the hospital, NF led other staff to throw a party in the patient’s room so the patient’s memorable, high school social event would not go unmarked.
CHALLENGE – SERIOUS DISEASE
Occasionally, NF had to miss time at the children’s hospital (she never called it ‘work’) when she was experiencing significant bouts of pain herself. The nurse became the patient. But she would always look forward to returning to care for the hospitalized children, never complaining about her personal health problems.
Creative, friendly, and talkative once she got to know you, NF focused on people’s emotional health as well as the medicine they took.
CAREER SATISFACTION
Before her life tragically ended at age 42 from complications of sickle cell anemia, NF “brought the power of love into someone’s life,” said her husband and the father of their four children. “She made people feel wanted. And when things didn’t go well for her patients, it broke her heart.”
In addition to her salaried nursing career, NF served as a volunteer within the Big Brothers and Big Sisters program. She also joined a ‘Holding Babies Program’ through her church.
One friend called NF “the sweetest, funniest, smartest nurse I know. Never met a woman with more focus and understanding of life.”
Said another nurse friend, “She had a love for people, for children. She had a calming spirit about her.”
This career story is based on an obituary written by Gary Miles, published within the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper on 3/12/23. The Editor’s explanation of sickle cell disease was drawn from Wikipedia to serve as a brief, overall perspective of the disease.
