My wife was admitted to NYU Langone’s orthopedic section at Kimmel Hospital. She is a breast cancer patient who had a tumor removed from her left hip and a plastic surgery. A day later, she suddenly had weakness in her hand and had problems using it. The medical staff at the hospital did not figure out at first what was causing it. They thought it was related to the positioning of her arm during the operations. One of the nurses, Hannah happened to be her nurse that night, she went to her and asked her to smile. She then asked me if her smile was her usual smile, and I said no, that was slightly down on one side.

As a result of this nurse’s alertness, skills and actions, they sent her for a cat scan and then an MRI to confirm the findings. It turned out that she had a tumor in her brain that was causing this. My wife was terrified at that time, and Hannah stayed by her and accompanied her to the cat scan and the MRI, held her hand and calmed her down enough that they were able to do the scans and find out what was wrong with her.

If it wasn’t for Hannah above and beyond caring we would have never known that she had a brain tumor until later date. Her caring and knowledge made a tremendous difference for my wife in getting the correct diagnosis so that she was able to start surgery/treatment for this as soon as possible. Hannah kept checking on her after the subsequent surgery and try to encourage and make my wife smile.