I would like to take the opportunity to nominate Gaby Waggoner (RN Holding department) for the DAISY Award. Yesterday she cared for a patient whose daughter had to make the difficult decision to allow her mother to have an operation. She and the mom are from out of town and were here simply to celebrate the daughter’s birthday. Gaby said that when picking the patient up from the ED the daughter was joking and said, “Mom you can’t die tomorrow because it's my birthday.”

Once the patient was in the holding area the tone changed and became tense due to having a general surgeon and a vascular surgeon offering different care paths. Gaby was the only support the daughter had, there were no relatives in San Antonio and other family lived in Brazil. The daughter was in tears as the mother rolled back to the operating room. Gaby did her best to console the daughter by reassuring her that her mom would be cared for like family. Approximately 30 minutes after the patient had gone to the OR, Gaby realized the patient’s daughter was in the walkway, in tears, so she prepared a holding room, and provided coffee/snacks, and a warm blanket.

Gaby called throughout the evening to check on the status and today, she brought a cake and some goodies to the daughter who remained at the patient's bedside in SICU! She is very humble and would never have shared her acts of kindness but thankfully a coworker asked about the cake and in turn shared the information with me. Gaby goes above and beyond on a daily basis but this situation took “the cake!” Thank you for the opportunity to recognize this amazing demonstration of caring like family.