 |
|
|
|
Patients Tell Their Stories - Joan Fortier |
|
|
|
|
Events |
|
|
Patients Tell Their Stories - Joan Fortier
Joanne "Joan" Fortier was comforted by the many Cooley staff she knows when she was treated here in April 2006.
Joan Fortier has lived on Valley Street in Northampton for all 72 years of her life. She and her husband, Norman "Bizz" Fortier, once owned Jake's restaurant in downtown Northampton, so it's no wonder there was a time when she and Bizz knew every doctor, dentist and police officer in town.
"There weren't too many people I didn't know," she says.
Joan's community connections still serve her well, and there are times when they bring her a good deal of comfort.
Take the morning in April 2006, for instance, when Joan awoke at 2:30 a.m., sweating, and with chest pains and vomiting. Because she had had a heart attack once before and recognized the signs, she was very scared as she rode by ambulance to Cooley Dickinson Hospital.
In the Emergency Department (ED), Joan heard somebody say, "You're going to be okay, Joan."
It was nurse Robin Bak, who was raised in Joan's neighborhood. "I watched this kid grow up," says Joan. "As soon as I heard his name, I already felt better. I thought, 'All of these people are going to take care of me.' "
Soon afterwards, Joan saw Bill Murphy, a nurse on the Critical Care Unit (CCU) who was helping out that evening in the ED. Bill, too, is a man Joan knows well. "He said, 'Hi Gram,' " she says, noting that many of her neighbors' children call her "Gramma Joan."
"Bill Murphy is an angel in disguise," she says. "He is a wonderful, wonderful nurse. He was there holding my hand."
Bill was the one who told Joan she would be transferred to Baystate Medical Center; the news frightened her, but Bill stuck by her. And Joan's ED physician, Dr. Tor Krogius, was also wonderful and caring. "These people get to you. They're so wonderful," she says.
Before Joan went to Baystate, Cooley Dickinson's ED staff ran an EKG and injected her with a medication that would break up any clots that might have been causing a blockage in her heart.
At Baystate, she underwent further testing, but she says, "The doctors there were happy to report that whatever Cooley Dickinson did must have worked," as she received no further treatment.
Joan's great experience with Cooley Dickinson doesn't end there, though.
Later that spring, Bizz was admitted to Cooley to have a pacemaker put in. He was admitted after surgery onto the CCU, and Joan stayed with him all afternoon and into the evening.
When a nutrition services employee came in to serve her husband breakfast, she noticed Joan and asked if she would like to have a guest tray delivered. "They fed me so I could stay with him, and the food was excellent," Joan says.
That same night, also in her husband's room, a man was visiting his father in the next bed at 11:30 p.m., and a nurse offered to bring in a cot so the son could spend the night.
Joan was very impressed, and she was pleased to have an opportunity several weeks later, at a luncheon for Cooley volunteers, to tell her story to Cooley Dickinson's President and CEO Craig Melin.
Craig spoke at the event, and Joan says part of his message was that Cooley Dickinson was working hard to become more family oriented.
Afterwards, Joan approached him, and told him the two stories about her husband's experience in the CCU. "I had to tell him how family oriented Cooley Dickinson already is," she says.
Joan and her husband have three grown children together - David, Thomas and Doreen Masi.
Joan is very grateful to Cooley Dickinson for the care she received there. She says, "It was just a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by people I know. This is my home town hospital. I just felt that this was so positive. They were all wonderful. Every single one of them."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|