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Improving lives one patient at a time
Nov 26, 2009 3:33 PM
UFT/Federation of Nurses members committed to those in their care
Its smiles all around for McDaniel, Jones, aide Eugenia Valdez (center), Vilar and his wife, Clotilde Jimenez.
Modern medicine has done a lot to prolong life. This story is about a nurse who improved one.
Ramon Vilar was bed-bound in his West 147th Street apartment for 20 years. At 98, the Dominican man hadn’t been in the open air, had felt neither sun nor rain, for two decades. He hadn’t even sat in his own living room for years.
Then he met Cynthia McDaniel.
McDaniel, a Federation of Nurses/UFT member, chapter leader and 29-year veteran registered nurse working out of the Jewish Home Lifecare home care center, wasn’t happy that her patient was unnecessarily bedridden, subject to frequent bed- sores and melancholy — although he never complained. So she waged a one-woman campaign to get him not only out of bed, but out of doors.
And she succeeded.
After being homebound for 20 years, 98-year-old Ramon Vilar is now out and about with a big assist from UFT registered nurse Cynthia McDaniel and a gentle push from escort/trainer Javon Jones.
Her first step was to get the former carpenter — victim of a fall that cracked his spine, permanently injured his bladder and ultimately made him a paraplegic — into the living room. “That was just last year’s project,” she said.
Then, last January, she told Vilar that their goal for the year would be to get him outside his house. Her motto is “Never underestimate a nurse,” she said, and she worked with Vilar to get him ready for the big day.
With his aide and escort lifting him up, Vilar got into a wheelchair brought specially for the event. His wife at first was in tears — but smiling. Once outside on the cool, clear afternoon, Vilar was as excited as a child as he watched what to him were new cars traversing upper Broadway and men playing dominoes, a popular Dominican pastime.
McDaniel customarily works with each patient for one hour. For Vilar, her work consists of giving him a backrub, prepouring his medicines, supervising the aide and talking with her about the patient. McDaniel also changes the catheter Vilar needs, checks every area of his body for skin breakdowns such as bedsores, and makes sure the institution-supplied air mattress is firm and inflated.
She has a caseload of 30 patients, 10 who need regular attention like Vilar, whom she sees weekly. Her other patients are attended to biweekly, which translates into treating roughly five patients a day.
How does she do it?
“It’s a matter of being organized,” she said. “All my patients live between 137th and 158th streets in Manhattan. I don’t own a car, so I take buses a lot or I walk.”
McDaniel sees a lesson here: “Never give up hope, and don’t lose your compassion, because this is what home care provides and is all about.”
It’s no surprise, then, that McDaniel is a big booster of home care and of the team of home care workers who keep elderly families intact wherever possible.
“It’s important to be in your own surroundings as long as you can be,” she said. “If it’s their choice to stay at home, it’s my job to keep them comfortable and safe for as long as I can.”
Like the other nearly 5,000 members of the UFT/Federation of Nurses, McDaniel is committed to those in her care.
The hard-charging RN also fears that the effect of any cuts in state Medicaid — something, like cuts to education, that has been discussed to help the state avoid bankruptcy — would mean losses not just to jobs, but to services now offered those who need them the most.
People like Ramon Vilar.
