Our daughter has known nothing but life in a hospital room since she was born 10 weeks ago. That is not likely to change for months to come. Throughout our stay, we have met too many excellent and exceptional nurses to list here. I wish I could nominate almost every nurse who has cared for her.

But Jenny Coblentz, BSN, RNC-NIC, stands out above the rest. She cared for our daughter when we didn’t yet know how to help her, and allowed us to be involved in her care where we could. We met Jenny after we found out our daughter had a brain tumor, but before we had any answers about a diagnosis or treatment plan. Jenny was in the consultation room with us, taking notes as our oncology doctor explained that our daughter was born with a rare childhood brain cancer that can often come with the worst of outcomes. That day, she helped to make sure we had the quiet space we needed to process this information as a family and later helped us to understand more about our daughter’s condition. She sat with us, she talked with us, and I’m pretty sure she cried with us. We have since moved on from the NICU, and we have greatly missed that team that made us feel at ease about leaving our daughter while we couldn’t be at the hospital.

Jenny has stayed in touch and followed our family as our daughter has progressed. She visits and helps us feel like we have a community here in the hospital. We can’t thank this nursing staff enough for caring so well for our daughter and our family. I really wish we could recognize all of our nursing staff over the last few months, but I hope that by nominating Jenny, we can show at least one member of our care team that they have made an impression on us.