My youngest daughter was diagnosed with type one diabetes just shy of her third birthday. It was a very life-changing diagnosis for her to receive. We went to the hospital and were there for 5 days. Lorena was the first person that we saw every day. She spent multiple hours teaching and re-teaching us the information that we needed to know to be able to take care of our daughter properly. She would pop in multiple times a day to check her progress, see how we were holding up, and to answer all our questions that had accumulated since we’d seen her last.

It’s hard to convey the magnitude of teaching that she did, and the immense patience that she did it with. She never seemed rushed and she repeated things as many times as she needed to until we had a good grasp of the information. She voluntarily came in every day on her weekend off to help educate and prepare us for life at home post-diagnosis. I learned from our nurses that she voluntarily takes calls, and comes in to educate and support every new pediatric diagnosis of the type of diabetes. She worked very closely with our daughter’s endocrinologist and was able to work miracles and get us a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and insulin pump prior to discharge. A 2-year-old isn’t able to verbalize or interpret how they are feeling very clearly, so they aren’t able to communicate if they feel their blood sugar is dropping low. She provided us with enough samples of the CGM to get us through until our insurance would start providing them, and she also helped us start the process of getting them set up through our insurance. She walked us through how to apply them to our daughter, what sites we could use, and showed us how to set the technology up on our phone.

Because of her work we were able to sleep more comfortably knowing that an alert would sound if our daughter’s blood sugar was dropping dangerously low, and we were able to catch and prevent it from happening while we were awake. I’ve also learned in the months that have passed since her diagnosis from the diabetic community how difficult it can be to get an insulin pump. A lot of people have to wait 6 months to a year to be able to get one, if not longer. When we decided what insulin pump we would like to use, Lorena was able to use her connections with the pump representatives to have a loaner PDM overnighted to us, and pods donated for us to use while we were waiting for approval from insurance. She helped save a 2-year-old from multiple (at least 13 if not more) needle pokes daily, and helped give us the tools to monitor and manage her diabetes as well as we possibly can with the technology available.

The emotional support that Lorena gave us was incomparable. She understood the challenges that we were going to be facing in managing this disease, along with the fear we had of what the future was going to hold for our daughter. She made us see that we would be able to find a new normal and that while life may look different then what we pictured for my daughter, she was still going to have a healthy and full life. She helped us develop the confidence that we needed to be able to take care of our daughter, and also let us vent our frustrations and concerns without judgment.

When we were discharged, Lorena knew how nervous we were and gave us her cell phone to reach out for support if we needed it. We’ve reached out to her a few times now, and every time we have, she has been so kind and helpful and given us reassurance that we were on the right path. Lorena is a nurse that is passionate about what she does and it shows in every aspect of her work. She has invested so much of her own emotional energy into my daughter’s care that I can only imagine what kind of toll that must take on her. She gives so much of herself to all of her patients and their families. She is an invaluable asset to Stormont-Vail and the patients that receive her care.