In November of 2019, I had to take a leave of absence due to complications mid-way through my pregnancy. This resulted in four weeks of bed rest at home, four weeks of bed rest in the hospital and, 5 weeks of time spent at home recovering from a C-section and the loss of my son. I remember the night before I was put on bed rest, I was down in the east tower lobby waiting to get called back to triage. Jessica was leaving work late and spied me sitting there. She came and talked to me, sat with me for a while, and offered to watch my 15 yr old (he has special needs) while I went back to triage. I can remember sitting there thinking what boss does this? Then again Jessica knew that my son and I had no family in Lubbock and the only help I had came from friends at UMC. She made sure to text me that night for updates and offered help in any way she could.
When I handed her my doctor's note the next day which gave me the next month her reply was what can we do for you? What do you need from us? For the next 12 weeks, that was what I heard from Jessica. While my MSICCU staff brought meals and visited, Jessica made sure she was well versed in HR policies to ensure that I knew exactly where I stood with insurance and employment status. She put a call out for PTO donations and kept my teammates informed of what was going on, always making sure of which information she could share with them.
Jessica checked on me weekly while I was at home on bedrest, and sometimes more often. When I moved into my room down in FCU antepartum there she was making sure that I had everything I needed. She took time out of her day to bring snacks, ask about my son who dealing with the transition of not having Mom at home, she's good at asking the hard questions in order to get the right information so that she can make the biggest impact on a situation. Jessica always made me feel as if she were in the trenches with me, and it wasn't even her fight.
The day I went into labor and had my C-section there was Jessica bright and early coming in like a hurricane that couldn't be deterred from its path, she made sure to assess the situation, answer any questions I might have, and she made me feel like everything would be ok because I had her in my corner. After my son was born and things weren't looking good there was Jessica again. She took on the responsibility of informing the staff of my son's birth, and loss the next day. When there were issues with getting a UMC pastor to the bedside, Jessica after hours, made phone calls and then helped facilitate the follow through to make sure that no other UMC family would be left in the same position. She put together a meal train for my family during those first couple weeks at home, checked on us, and never let me feel like we had been forgotten by our UMC MSICCU family.
Since coming back to work she has continued to keep tabs on me and how I'm doing. I know this because she asks my work bestie how I'm doing, and what I need to help make my transition easier. I have never been made to feel like working was more important than taking care of myself. This is just part of what Jessica does for her MSICCU staff. She is behind the scenes working for us just as hard if not harder than we work for her. I couldn't have been blessed to work for a better nurse leader than Jessica Wolff. I hope she has some understanding of how she greatly impacts the lives of the people around her.