My journey started in May of 2014 when a patient was admitted to the hospital who had heart failure. Little did I know that this patient's journey with a special nurse would have such an extraordinary impact on my life. I have been a nurse at Henry Ford Hospital for 23 years and thought that I had love for patients until I witnessed love, compassion, dedication, and perseverance in an entirely different realm. The story I am going to tell you has given me inspiration to strive to come closer to what this amazing nurse, Karen Jaynes, achieved.

The story begins on a spring day during our lunch hour when Karen continued to pick my brain about how best to take care of her patients and prevent them from getting pressure ulcers. Nurses do this kind of thing, bounce ideas off each other to help their patients. You see, she is on a special prevention team to prevent patients from having skin breakdown during their hospital stay. Her thoughts continued to focus on a certain man because of his delicate situation; he had heart trouble and was young with a wife and two children. How could she play a part in his recovery and make sure that he went home ulcer free? I thought to myself, she is trained to do this; she is a nurse, but her journey with this man and his family had only begun.

Even though our lunches only lasted an hour, she used them to fill my mind about projects she was exploring to better her patient care, and explosions of ideas she had to make her patients more comfortable. I would ponder on the thought: How, on her lunch hour, could she still be thinking about her patients? I on the other hand just wanted to relax and think about nothing. She continually spoke about a patient that now had been in the hospital for months. It intrigued me to think that she was so dedicated to him and encompassed his whole being into her thoughts. She not only spoke about keeping his skin intact, but his emotions, his fears, and how she was helping him cope with his situation. He needed a new heart but had an underlying problem that kept him from being put on the transplant list.

She knew so much about him and his wife. She knew their children's names, his life history, his inspirations and fears, and his struggles. Talk about "taking 5" to get to know a patient, it sounded as though she had taken hours; but in reality she had packed as much as she could in the little time she had with him, and had made it count. She promised him if he got stronger and went home she would come to his homecoming party. His stay was long, but after 3 1/2 months he walked out of the hospital with a devise to keep his heart pumping.

After he returned home from a rehab facility, she hopped in her car like it was nothing to travel two hours to her patient's house for his homecoming party. She met his extended family and friends and praised him for the work he had done to become strong enough to go home.

Time passed and he returned to the hospital many times with increasing problems. Again, we would be having lunch and our conversation would be interrupted by a phone call. Selfishly I would think, is she going to answer it on our lunch hour? But that never crossed her mind. I could see the look of concern when she picked up the phone, as it was his wife on the other line. Her mouth would whisper, "Okay, where is he?" Before she would even finish her lunch, she would be up and on her way to his room to make sure he was comfortable. In that moment I realized that she was painting a picture of what compassion involves and how to actually live it. Who is this women? How can she give this much? I started to reevaluate my relationship with my patients.

He and his family started to grow weary that he was coming to the end of his life. Was this it? Could nothing else be done? This did not stop her drive to find out more about his problematic underlying condition that kept him from getting a new heart. I would hear her on the phone talking to other professionals about the condition and if they had ever encountered it. These were colleagues she had gotten to know though the years and relied on their expert opinion. She researched, collaborated, and during this all, continued to nurture this patient and family even though he was not always admitted to her unit when hospitalized.

Her dedication and research about his condition and collaboration with him and his wife, lead them to continue to have hope that his problems would not keep him from receiving a new heart. Life is more important than time. Life is what this nurse thought about. She would say to me, "I just know that God has a plan for him and it doesn't end here." Her struggle to accept the unacceptable was not going to stop her.

The story ends on Easter morning of this year when I received an unexpected text from her. "Pray, pray, he is about to receive his new heart." I immediately dropped to my knees and started to pray. I laid there for a while reflecting on all that I had gained from watching this process. When I called her on the phone that afternoon to ask her what she was doing, expecting her to be with her family on Easter day, I got the reply, "At the hospital of course." She wasn't home with her family, she was at the hospital supporting her patient and his family, an advocate to the end.

The end of Karen's journey was only the beginning of mine. Her actions sparked a flame in me to consider how I practice as a nurse. Talk about the Henry Ford experience, she turned a delicate situation into a triumph, not only for nurses, but for our whole hospital. She not only did her job by preventing pressure ulcers; this extraordinary nurse showed her true character by encompassing this patient in an entire holistic manner. I realized that this did not come from her training as a nurse; this came from her soul. As Martin Luther King Jr. stated, "Life's most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?" When I saw her the next day at work, I asked her how it went and she humbly said, "He received his heart on the day Christ raised from the dead; what a special day."

I only write this because I hope this inspires other nurses to follow her lead, and to understand the special gift they have as a nurse to change people's lives. Karen Jaynes is a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a friend, a nurse, but most of all, an angel.