Our daughter lives and works in rural Kenya managing program innovations for an NGO that improves the lives of subsistence farmers, primarily in East Africa. She surprised us this June by coming home for a Father's Day and Mom's Retirement celebration. Unfortunately, she also surprised us by bringing with her a full-blown case of malaria. She'd been tested before she left home and told she just had the flu, so she went ahead with the 24-hour-plus journey from Bungoma, Kenya to Lexington, Mass. She later learned that false negatives are commonplace. We brought her to the emergency room at Lahey that evening, but by the time she was tested, the test was read, and she actually received the Coartem that would kill the malaria, she'd been ill for 6 days. After one night in the emergency room and a second night in a standard room, she was having great difficulty breathing, and the cavity around her lungs was filling with fluid. The next morning, we got a call that she was being moved to the SICU, as all the beds in the Medical ICU were full.
We are extremely grateful for all of the care our daughter received at Lahey, from the Infectious Disease and Pulmonary specialists, the emergency room physicians and staff, and the respiratory and other technicians, many of whom had never actually seen a patient with malaria, but as you all know, the care provided by the nursing staff makes all the difference. One nurse in particular stood out, Samantha McCleod.
Among the many caring things Samantha did for my our daughter during her time in the SICU was getting hold of a large reclining chair and footstool, so she could sit up. This also entailed rearranging the many tubes to which she was attached—the oxygen and IV fluids coming into her, the catheter coming out of her, the heart and respiratory monitors, the blood pressure sleeve that she found terrifyingly painful that woke her every hour or two, the massaging foot sleeves she actually liked, and which prevented her from getting a blood clot. The chair and stool not only made her more comfortable, it also helped her lungs clear out and made it possible to sleep, which she could not do lying down. By thinking outside the box and going that extra mile, Samantha directly contributed to our daughter's recovery. She also helped her through a number of "undignified" moments and procedures with caring and competence. She rubbed her back and generally went out of her way to make her feel comfortable. And she showed kindness and understanding to us—her parents, brother, and sister-in-law—who were so worried, despite reassurances from her caregivers that she would get well. When she was released from the hospital after 8 days, we wanted to say thank you in a big way, and though we didn't really know the significance of the DAISY Award at the time, we are so happy to have nominated Samantha.