Dani Giaritelli
March 2021
Danielle
Giaritelli
,
BSN, RN
Acute Respiratory ICU
Emory University Hospital
After wheeling J back to his room, Dani and J sat and cried together, sharing a simultaneous moment of devastating loss and miraculous recovery.
There is so much to say about what makes Dani an incredible nurse: her can-do attitude, her cheery demeanor, her wonderful sense of humor, her top-notch clinical skills. But Dani's greatest asset as a nurse is her ability to bond with her patients - helping them feel not like they are patients, but family. The story below is just one such example.
After nearly 9 months working as the hospital's primary COVID ICU, we've experienced our fair share of tragedies and injustices at the hands of the pandemic. Recently, we had a mother and son both admitted to our unit. The mother was placed on VV ECMO and requiring maximum life support. Her son, J, was admitted shortly afterward, referred by the same hospital for an ECMO evaluation given how sick he was. Unfortunately, he had been hypoxic for such a prolonged period of time that he did not qualify for ECMO, given how poor his prognosis was. For an extended period of time, he was the sickest patient on the unit - paralyzed, proned, maxed out on ventilator support.
But after several weeks on the brink of death, a miracle happened. J got better. He eventually was trached and we were able to liberate him from the ventilator. He woke up, returned to his baseline mental status, started getting out of bed, and showing signs of a real recovery - something we haven't seen very often since the start of COVID. Unfortunately, around the same time, J's mother took a turn for the worse. She was in multi-system organ failure and would not survive.
Dani cared for both of these patients multiple times throughout their stay, and as a result, built a strong relationship with their family. When the decision was made to withdraw care on J's mother, she asked him if he wanted to see his mom. She worked to mobilize a still-sick ICU patient to the other side of the unit so he could be with his mother before she died. After wheeling J back to his room, Dani and J sat and cried together, sharing a simultaneous moment of devastating loss and miraculous recovery.
A week or so later, on a Saturday, we received a call to 5G ICU. It was J, calling from subacute rehab. He asked to speak to Dani, and when the nurse told him she wasn't working that day, he said "make sure to tell her I walked 100 feet today in rehab."
We don't often hear from our patients after they are discharged from the hospital, and I can imagine that is due largely to the trauma they experience throughout the course of an ICU admission. Who would want to revisit some of the darkest days of their life? But the fact that this patient, who lingered for so long on the brink of death, thought to call Dani days after he had been discharged so she could share in one of his recovery milestones - it says everything about the kind of nurse and person that Dani is. She is a supporter, a true leader, a bright spirit, and a loving heart. She has said that this experience reminded her why she became a nurse, and I believe her patients and coworkers are incredibly fortunate that she found her calling.
After nearly 9 months working as the hospital's primary COVID ICU, we've experienced our fair share of tragedies and injustices at the hands of the pandemic. Recently, we had a mother and son both admitted to our unit. The mother was placed on VV ECMO and requiring maximum life support. Her son, J, was admitted shortly afterward, referred by the same hospital for an ECMO evaluation given how sick he was. Unfortunately, he had been hypoxic for such a prolonged period of time that he did not qualify for ECMO, given how poor his prognosis was. For an extended period of time, he was the sickest patient on the unit - paralyzed, proned, maxed out on ventilator support.
But after several weeks on the brink of death, a miracle happened. J got better. He eventually was trached and we were able to liberate him from the ventilator. He woke up, returned to his baseline mental status, started getting out of bed, and showing signs of a real recovery - something we haven't seen very often since the start of COVID. Unfortunately, around the same time, J's mother took a turn for the worse. She was in multi-system organ failure and would not survive.
Dani cared for both of these patients multiple times throughout their stay, and as a result, built a strong relationship with their family. When the decision was made to withdraw care on J's mother, she asked him if he wanted to see his mom. She worked to mobilize a still-sick ICU patient to the other side of the unit so he could be with his mother before she died. After wheeling J back to his room, Dani and J sat and cried together, sharing a simultaneous moment of devastating loss and miraculous recovery.
A week or so later, on a Saturday, we received a call to 5G ICU. It was J, calling from subacute rehab. He asked to speak to Dani, and when the nurse told him she wasn't working that day, he said "make sure to tell her I walked 100 feet today in rehab."
We don't often hear from our patients after they are discharged from the hospital, and I can imagine that is due largely to the trauma they experience throughout the course of an ICU admission. Who would want to revisit some of the darkest days of their life? But the fact that this patient, who lingered for so long on the brink of death, thought to call Dani days after he had been discharged so she could share in one of his recovery milestones - it says everything about the kind of nurse and person that Dani is. She is a supporter, a true leader, a bright spirit, and a loving heart. She has said that this experience reminded her why she became a nurse, and I believe her patients and coworkers are incredibly fortunate that she found her calling.