At 21 weeks pregnant, my husband and I found out that one of our twins would be born with Heterotaxy Syndrome. Due to the syndrome, the baby would have severe heart complications. When the babies were born, my son was immediately taken to Cincinnati Children's and placed in the CICU. From there, our life was a whirlwind.
My husband and I didn't know much about the cardiac world, and we were learning so many new things every day. Our son had a complicated and complex heart, and his journey was just the same: complicated and complex. After 110 days inpatient, 3 heart surgeries, a heart cath, a bronc procedure, and lots of other pokes and prodding, tests and trials, he was discharged. However, his path was not an easy one and was in and out of Children's at least once a month.
Brianne entered our lives in February 2015 after his 4th heart surgery. Our son wasn't recovering the way everyone had expected him to and all kinds of ideas about his future were being tossed around to us. It was confusing, frustrating, and downright disappointing. As you can imagine in our time spent at Children's we met a plethora of wonderful nurses, but there was something even more amazing about Brianne. She listened to us---not just heard us speaking to her, but actually LISTENED and tried to understand our point of view.
She tried to problem solve ways to make CICU a better environment not only for our son but for our family as well. We continued to brainstorm ideas with her every time he was inpatient. She was instrumental in getting him in a primary team when we learned that he would be staying for many weeks or months.
When she was taking care of our son, Brianne's primary concern was his comfort and safety. She would ask us questions about his behavior at the beginning of her shift with him; what was normal? What activities did he like or not like? What signs show us that he is uncomfortable? How was his day so far? Brianne is extremely knowledgeable about cardiac care, but we also loved that she became knowledgeable about him as well.
Brianne is an excellent communicator. My husband and I were not able to be at the hospital 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so in our absence we asked that the nurses call us if he showed any signs of change or had a change to his plan of care for the day. Brianne was fantastic with her short but detailed updates!
Brianne is brilliant at her job, but she wanted us to feel safe and comfortable with our son's care as well. Before she would administer a medication, she would explain to us what he was receiving, the dosage amount, and why he was receiving the medication. When he had a bi-pap mask or breathing tube placed, she made sure to educate us on how each would benefit him. Unfortunately, our son's poor heart and lung function caused him to have a trach put in, and Brianne jumped right in to teach us everything we needed to know to feel comfortable with it as well.
Our son was having a tremendous amount of difficulty breathing and a code was called. Brianne stood by our sides for support. She even made a phone call to one of our parents when we weren't able to get a hold of them and made a phone call to his primary doctor since we weren't able to because we wanted to focus on our son. When the time came for us to let our son go to heaven, Brianne cried tears right alongside us. When it was time for us to leave the hospital and our son needed to be taken to his resting place at the hospital until the funeral home came, Brianne snuggled him up and walked him there for us. If I couldn't walk him there myself, the next best person was Brianne.
When Brianne was caring for our son, she would ask us what concerns we would like addressed in rounds. If we didn't feel comfortable addressing them, she would be our advocate. Since he was a long term patient, we were having Family Care Meetings once a week. Brianne worked with us to design an outline for the meeting so that all questions were answered (from both our family and the doctors) and the meeting could be effective, timely, and run smoothly. She is truly an outstanding nurse and our family was so lucky to have had her caring for sweet boy. She has made a huge impact on our lives and we will NEVER forget her.