I talked to Nurse Deidre Wilson-Allen for a long time when I visited my dad in late March of 2025. This was shortly after my mom‘s birthday, who we lost about a year and a half ago to brain glioblastoma, so I was especially raw. Deidre is the best nurse yet, welcoming me and putting my nerves at ease from the very beginning.

She’s a very spiritual, nonjudgmental lady, and I feel she uses discretion, respecting people who come from different faiths, but she could feel intuitively what I needed at the time. She said she knows what it’s like to go through this, self-disclosing appropriately, her care of family members, and stated the decisions families make are private, and no matter what anybody thinks or decides, everybody has a time, and only when it’s their time, they will go.

My dad seemed completely peaceful, and Deidre said he may even be talking to God, and he’s meant to be here, because he is. She said he did experience pain when they dressed his wounds, so I asked her to consider giving him a pain reliever before that, and she said she would. She was so wonderful, feeding me on many different levels in a holistic way: information-wise, physically with a hug (we had our robes and gloves on), emotionally, and spiritually.

Then, only when I was fully informed, she had answered all my questions, and we drew conclusions together, she left the room and gave me private time with Dad. It has been rare in my experience to find a nurse who is so well-rounded, so I just had to look for a way to honor that and her, because she literally brought tears to my eyes.

She is a true healer, she is the cream of the crop, and if all nurses were like her, we would all be much better off. As wonderful as she is caring for my father, she cared for me in a sense as well, and she is being recognized for that.