- I was actually born with
hypoplastic right heart syndrome,
or pulmonary atresia, I think they call it.
And so I was born in Eden, North Carolina,
and when I was born, they sent me here.
Course, as I got older, these people became my family.
- [Woman] That's right.
- I've just always been coming here
for almost 37 years now. (laughs)
I couldn't do a lot.
I couldn't even walk down the sidewalk at my apartment
without having to stop and rest.
- By the time Aleta was referred to me,
she had already seen a number of different physicians
and had been cared for by a lot of folks
over the years at our institution.
She had all of her surgeries performed here,
she had all of her cardiovascular care followed up here.
She had gotten to a point
where her heart was really
not going to sustain her in the long run.
She was referred for the evaluation of transplantation,
and during the evaluation process
we were really impressed
by Aleta's ability to persevere
through all of the illnesses that she's had,
and so we took it on
as a challenge for our program
to help her out as much as we could.
- She had a positive attitude.
As sick as she was,
and as much as she went through,
she had a smile on her face.
She was positive, she was so appreciative
for anything that you did, for anything at all.
She was just a pleasure to be around,
and so she made you
wanna fight harder for her.
She was fighting so hard
she made you wanna fight with her and work with her.
- Aleta didn't want me to go on vacation,
so I bought her a teddy bear with a Harley outfit.
- So this is Harley,
and Sandy brought him back from the beach,
Myrtle Beach, when she went there on vacation.
And so while I was out of the bed one time,
having tests made,
Harley got lost in the sheets and things on the bed,
and he got lost in the laundry room. (laughs)
So Sandy went down there, and had to dig
through all the laundry to find him. (laughs)
- And then her grandma is
a very strong influence in her life.
It was grandma's birthday while she was recovering,
so I went to the gift shop
and picked out a willow angel for her
that had a golden heart,
and so we gave that to grandma
from Aleta for her birthday.
- We watch cooking shows and we listen to music.
Aleta likes the same kind of music I like,
which is Chicago, and Journey,
and Led Zeppelin, and ZZ Top, and Aretha Franklin,
so I brought my CD player in
and we played CDs in CCU.
We listened to those to make her feel more at home,
as much as she could possibly feel, in the unit.
- When somebody's there that you know and you connect with,
it makes it a lot easier.
You don't feel so alone.
And of course when they wanna do special stuff with you.
We would play our music, you know, it was fun.
Kind of filled the void when my family wasn't there.
- Caring for patients like Aleta is just so heartwarming
and that's what nursing is about.
Taking care of somebody, watching them grow.
Not just taking care of their patients,
but taking care of their families
cause you have to take care of families
when you take care of patients.
The families are an extended patient.
- [Woman] Mm-hmm.
- They make it very worthwhile.
It's wonderful to see them, as sick as they were,
to come back and just have
the great life that they wanna have,
and doing what they wanna do and be able to do.
- Oh, has done a fantastic job.
She's returned to school,
she's back in community college.
Aleta's doing a lot with her life
that she was never able to do before any of this.
- Cause it's the way we are.
It's the way we wanna give care, it's who we are.
I Care is who we are.
It's giving that, going that extra mile,
showing patients and families we care.
I Care means I care about you
and I want you to get better,
to go do what you wanna do.
Not only do we care about
our patients and our patients' families,
I think we care about each other too, and it shows.