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The pandemic was in full swing as ICU nurse Ashlee Schwartz entered her tenth year as a nurse at Mercy Hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but while critical care nurses may feel like they’re running on fumes these days, their profound sense of empathy and ability to care is still running at full steam. Like this Nurse of the Week, they continue to put the “C” in ICU as they go above and beyond to bring comfort to their charges.

When Schwartz – already a 2017 and 2018 Daisy Award winner – saw 23-year-old Eric Robison watching his 22-year-old wife Emily breathe with the aid of a ventilator, the sight went straight to the RN’s heart. Emily had recently given birth to a daughter, but the Covid-plagued young family was in no shape to celebrate. “The image will forever be inscribed in my head. He was just staring in a daze. It literally broke my heart to pieces,” Schwartz said. “Especially as an ICU nurse, the reality of life with this virus is any patient’s story could very well be our own story someday – and I just thought to myself, ‘What if this was me sitting in this chair staring into my husband’s room?'”

Due to Emily’s youth, her husband and clinicians had been hopeful even after she was placed on a ventilator, and Schwartz, a mother herself, stepped in for Emily as the unvaccinated new mom did battle with the relentless virus. Newborns require a LOT of equipment, so Schwartz started by announcing the birth of baby Carmen on Facebook and sent out a call for baby gear, as the beleaguered little family had not had the leisure to stock up on infant essentials. With a nurse’s thoroughness, she set up registries on Amazon, Go Fund Me, and other popular sites – and the response was astounding. The Go Fund Me raised $16,000, and over 200 people donated gifts.

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“I remember all I could picture was if Emily was going to be able to overcome COVID, more than likely, Carmen would be home before Emily. Emily was going to be in the ICU for a handful of months and then go to intensive rehab and all I could picture after that was her coming home and walking into her house and having nothing for her new baby,” Schwartz said.

Tragically, Carmen’s 22-year-old mother succumbed to the virus even as caring strangers all over Arkansas and beyond donated gifts and cash for the baby girl.

“Never would I have imagined that gifts would start pouring in from all over Arkansas and the rest of the country,” Robison told CNN. “It’s bittersweet because I wish Emily was still alive to see it. But not having to worry about Carmen being taken care of is one less thing I have to worry about right now.”

“I called Eric and asked if he and Emily had a baby registry and he didn’t know what a registry was. He said all they had for Carmen were clothes. As Emily was fighting for her life, I just felt called and a sense of responsibility to make sure this baby had everything she needed,” Schwartz said.

“All I could picture was Emily coming home after being in the hospital for months and not having much of anything for Carmen and asking herself ‘Why did someone not help me?'”

After Emily’s death, Schwartz, with Eric’s blessing, made two pictures of the young mom’s handprints, so Carmen will “forever have a keepsake of her mama.” As she told Fox, “I love to see other people blessed, it makes my heart so happy, I’m so overwhelmed with happiness. If you can pay life forward to people it brings so much joy to your life, sometimes those acts of kindness, people will never forget.”

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Robison now regards Schwartz as a family connection, and says, “Ashlee will be in Carmen’s life until she’s older and Ashlee’s sons and my daughter will probably be best friends.”

For more on this story, see CNN: https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/us/covid-19-baby-registry-mom-died-nurse/index.html.

 

Koren Thomas
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