Over the past year, I can say we have spent a good amount of time at St. Luke's due to my dad having diabetes and lung cancer. In November my dad was admitted into ICU. He was having a hard time breathing which in turn came to be pneumonia. With the 4 days that we were in ICU, we were told that the cancer has spread to his liver and brain. At that point, we were not sure what was going to happen and what the next steps were.
A few days later we were transferred to the 3rd floor where we were in a state of still not knowing what was going to happen but knew he was stable and was moved out of ICU. This is where John Garcia comes into play. He was dad's day nurse that was caring for him on this part of the journey. John made sure that dad and we as dad's family were taken care of. He came in and checked on dad regularly and made dad very comfortable.
As a man in the hospital who loved football, John would come in and watch a little of the games with dad multiple times. The compassion that John had was unbelievable. John saw the love for my dad as we found out on the Saturday we were no longer able to do anything, and dad would be going to a skilled facility to transfer into hospice.
As we transferred over to Park Manor the next week, my dad took every chance he could to talk about John and how much he was so happy about the way he was taken care of in the remaining days in his life.
My last conversation with my dad was how he wanted me to call the hospital and make sure that the correct people knew what an awesome job John did and how he was the best nurse to ever take care of him. I told him I would. My dad passed away eleven days later in the early morning and he went peacefully.
The conclusion to all this is that John deserves to be recognized for his work, compassion, caring and loving heart. I saw this with my dad and I am positive he is like that with ALL his patients.