Our daughter, G, had spinal fusion surgery. As we had mentioned at our one-month appointment yesterday, she is doing extremely well. She is pain-free and back to school full time without any issues. As I had also mentioned at our appointment, we are so thankful to all who were involved in her surgery and her care while in the hospital. While we were at the hospital, we had several nurses over our 4-day stay, but there was one nurse in particular who really went above and beyond in terms of her care and attentiveness, Kersten Knecht.
G's surgery was on a Wednesday, and she was fortunate to be in Kersten's care Friday during the day shift. G would be in agony and ask if she was due for any pain medication. Kersten would come in and help show us ways in which we could make G comfortable, having her pain go from an 8 to a 4, without the use of any medication. Yes, pain medicine was needed at times and given so when due, but it really was the key to helping us better care for G once we were home on our own. Because we found other ways in helping with her pain, she was off oxycodone in 5 days, and completely off all medication, including Tylenol and Motrin, within 2 weeks. Kersten really went above and beyond, to ensure G was comfortable and gave us all the tools to better care for her ourselves.
Her thoughtfulness and attention to detail (as when she made sure we had our prescriptions filled ahead of time on her shift), really showed how much she cares about her patients and their families. We feel so fortunate to have had her when we did. I do feel that she would be a great mentor to other nurses in sharing her knowledge with them (maybe in some sort of training) so other patients can benefit as well.
As I mentioned above, Kersten was our nurse on Friday. While on her shift she informed us that the hospital had a pharmacy that could fill our prescriptions for us so we did not have to do so once we left the hospital. She made a point to ensure it was taken care of on Friday on her shift because the pharmacy closed by 1 pm on Saturday and would remain so until Monday. We left the hospital on Saturday at 8 pm, with a 1-hour drive home G was in so much pain from the car ride and was due for one of her pain medications shortly after we arrived home. Already having the medication on hand was such a huge relief in an already stressful recovery.
Another way in which Kersten went above and beyond, she wrote on the whiteboard all the goals for the day, use the spirometer X number of times, get up out of bed X number of times, go for a walk X number of times, etc. All things to keep us on track of getting G up and moving and focused on her recovery. She then would check on us to ensure that we were on track with meeting those goals.
I cannot begin to describe how scary it is to have to take care of your 10 year old child after such a major surgery, without any medical knowledge whatsoever. Kersten provided us with the tools to help us walk out of that hospital that next day and better care of her in those weeks that followed. I cannot thank her enough!!