Joanna Lukaszewski displayed that she had the ability and knowledge to perform as a nursing professional at a most stressful and needed time. My husband had surgery for enlarged prostate and at 10 pm he aspirated, and his blood pressure dropped very low and also his vitals. It became a critical moment for his life. He was losing a lot of blood and developed pneumonia.
My son and I were in the room at that time. We both were experiencing the most horrible time of our lives, seeing my husband of 63 years and my son's father, a most special father, possibly dying. I felt faint, my son's face turned completely red, as he has high blood pressure, and Joanna sat us both down and went back to proceed to quickly give IVs to my husband and whatever she had to do to save my husband's life. She then asked us to go to the waiting room and then about an hour later we were told he was stable. Today he is home and doing well.
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After having a thoracotomy and during my stay in this unit everyone from specialists, nurses on down to even the cleaning people treated me with dignity and utmost care. My night shift nurse during her shift had the difficult task of dealing with me during my transition from IV pain medication over to oral medication. Joanna was there every time I pushed the call button and helped me through the painful change over to the right dose of oral pain medication and muscle relaxers that I would need to have when I left the hospital. In the morning, Joanna helped me clean up and gave me a shave so I would look nice when I went home. Not only was she very professional but pleasant to talk to.
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Joanna was wonderful, compassionate, very assertive and took great care of me. She was so helpful. Joanna truly deserves the DAISY Award.