I was a patient at Moses Cone Hospital for three days for Congestive Heart Failure. I traveled to Dallas, Texas for a business meeting and back to North Carolina; while traveling home I started experiencing an inability to breathe and was short of breath when walking through the concourse of Hartsville International/ATL Airport. After contacting my wife and scheduling a primary doctor’s visit when I arrived home at 3:00 pm, I quickly changed my mind on the flight home to go immediately to the Cone Healthcare facility at the “Drawbridge” location where my wife met me. I was immediately taken to the back and started procedures to determine my condition once announcing that I had respiratory issues.

After being told that I needed to be admitted to the hospital, I stayed at Drawbridge until the following day and then was transported to Moses Cone Hospital 3 East, where the staff immediately prepped me for relieving the fluid from my body. Everyone showed much concern from your Drawbridge facility by monitoring me for 17 hours at the actual hospital 3 East. I quickly realized that Cone Health Care faces the same issues that I do in my business and that’s a shortage of staff, which lead me to a great appreciation of our staff for working long hours and giving 100% to the patients.

During my stay, everyone was very polite/curtious making my stay comfortable and time to think about changes that I need to make in my life moving forward, but one person went over and beyond with my wife and myself. I had the pleasure of having Velia Charge Nurse; she greeted me when she started her shift by calling me Mr. K and listening to the nurse she was relieving. What struck me is that’s what my employees call me also. At this point, I had not slept since leaving Dallas based on not having my CPAP machine, so between the nurse prior ordering from respiratory and Velia validating it to get delivered. I finally got some sleep.

When Velia came in on Saturday afternoon to discharge me, she went through the directions and really showed emotion toward my well-being. I’ll simply say that she became straight with me on taking care of myself and spoke to us in the manner of looking at all the life that I have to enjoy; Wife, Children, and Grandchildren that are here for me. Both my wife and I became emotional and talked all the way home about how Velia took the time to “simply care”. If our world lived on this daily premise, it would be a lot easier. Velia went over and beyond her duties and showed care and concern. I’m working currently to initiate this into my business of 73 employees to better serve our customers. Velia is a top-notch Healthcare Provider.