As a world-class health provider, CCHMC’s foundational strength is built on the excellence of the individuals who comprise the health system. There are many individuals who have provided us with excellent care at CCHMC, but Joan Higby exceeds even the high standard set by her colleagues. To understand what Joan has meant to our family, I have to briefly introduce our family and, in particular, our daughter.

Our family is unique; we have two living biological children (both with medical needs) and a daughter who passed from a rare degenerative neurological condition. After the passing of our daughter, we chose to use the medical knowledge (ranging from g-tubes to ventilators) that we had gained from her life, and the lives of our living daughters, to help other medically fragile children and we ultimately adopted two significantly medically challenged children from the foster care system. Our time spent inpatient in hospitals can be measured not in days or weeks or even months but years and our time in outpatient settings is even longer.

Our extensive experience with pediatric medical care gives us a unique insight that allows us to fully appreciate and value what Joan has meant to our family. Because we live five hours away from Cincinnati in a different state, the majority of our healthcare experiences did not come from CCHMC. Rather, our experience was with a Children’s Hospital in our hometown. While our experiences, with that hospital were favorable, they were not in a position to help our biological daughter. She, from age 6, had spent a fair amount of time in our local Children’s Hospital, first for multiple kidney stone procedures, and then for unexplained abdominal pain and weight loss. Our local Children’s Hospital told us that they were “out of options” for her, could not explain her problem, and suggested that it might be a young girl’s imagination. We had faith that our daughter’s imagination centered on ponies and unicorns and not on imaginary symptoms, so we decided to seek a second opinion from a world-class hospital with a highly-ranked GI department. It was one of the best decisions that we ever made and it is how we met Joan.

The anxiety of a five-hour drive to a city we didn’t know, to a health system that was foreign to us, with an uncertain reception from medical professionals, melted away when we met Joan. During our very first encounter with her, she strove to put us, and especially our daughter, at ease both in terms of our medical visit but also with respect to our visit to Cincinnati. She told the patient that she would “love the doctor”. She went out of her way to talk about his kindness and friendliness. This was hugely helpful to our young daughter who was afraid going into the appointment that this doctor would also think that her problems were all in her head or due to an overactive imagination.

Joan’s warmth and friendliness, coupled with her kind words about the Doctor allowed the patient to be open to trusting. Joan also strove to make the patient's first-ever visit to Cincinnati a positive one, that wasn’t myopically centered around her health problems. Joan provided us with tons of information on local Cincinnati attractions, from the Zoo, to Kings Island, to Skyline Chili. That first encounter was almost four years ago. Since that time we’ve made multiple trips to CCHMC for doctor visits, scopes, etc. The constant in each of these visits has been Joan’s kind-hearted and helpful presence. Joan and everyone at CCHMC has made us feel welcome along the way. More than that, they’ve diagnosed and helped her immensely so that she isn’t in pain and not losing weight.

As part of helping her medically, Joan has been critical to us. The five-hour distance does not lend itself to frequent office visits. Joan has been our liaison with all of our day-to-day needs and questions. She is always willing to take any question or concern seriously and compassionately and channels our questions to the appropriate person so that we receive incredibly prompt feedback. The patient's medical care would not be possible without her help in this area. She has also helped to schedule appointments and scopes together so that we don’t travel more than necessary. She also continues to provide us with tips about Cincinnati events for us to enjoy while visiting.

At this juncture, several years after meeting Joan, we are season pass holders for Kings Island and have a family membership to your city’s beautiful zoo. (And, yes, we’ve been known to try to line up appointments with doctors so that we can enjoy Winterfest and the Zoo Lights and Joan has helped with that too!) We still have not quite acquired a taste for Skyline chili, no matter how many “ways” it’s made, but we are working on that… More important than enjoying your city though, is the fact that our daughter's life has been changed for the better due to CCHMC’s excellent care of which Joan is an indispensable and invaluable part.