The word surreal best describes the experience I had following my husband’s collapse to the floor, and administering CPR. After being resuscitated, his heart stopped three more times at Payson Regional Medical Center before he was flown to Banner University a flight I didn’t expect him to survive.

Upon seeing him in his MICU room, I was filled with worry about his touch-and-go condition, and the doctors and resident I spoke to in his first four or so hours there kept asking me about a DNR, reminding me that the chances of survival remained slim. Nurse Kelly Chavez came on duty the next morning and the mood changed with her appearance.

No one was more encouraging than she! Her positive attitude was contagious as she taught me about the different drugs he was receiving and helped me wade through the process to expect as his condition improved. She kept doctors updated and made recommendations for and against different procedures and scans. As she followed her recovery, she told me the positive signs she was noticing, which proved very accurate.

When his surgeon came in and told us that he had suffered a pulmonary embolism, I was surprised because we had not yet heard back from a second radiology read, but Kelly went into his records to confirm this information for me. I cannot express how thankful I am that Kelly was my husband's attending nurse for the first two days of his hospitalization. She was there to facilitate the removal of his ventilator tube, she removed the skin-based IV needles, and set up his foley bag removal too, and she was there to witness his first steps.

.Kelly was also very patient as he spoke nonsense when coming out of sedation, joking with him and honoring him throughout his desire to have a conversation that made more sense in his head than coming out of his mouth. Thank you, Nurse Kelly Chavez, for being the angel we needed during our stay in MICU.