Lydia Castillo
April 2015
Lydia
Castillo
,
BSN, RN
Surgical Multispecialty
University of Chicago Medicine
Chicago
,
IL
United States

 

 

 

There is a man named Cesar Milan who is called the "Dog Whisperer" because he has this amazing and uncanny ability to speak to the animals and simplify the motivations of their behavior that mystifies mere mortals. Well what you don't know is that there are similar people who are able to do that with veins. If you've never been called a hard stick, you may not relate to the deep appreciation of having a "Vein Whisperer" arrive into your room. After your arms have been stuck multiple times to the point where they are bruised so badly that the skin looks more like poorly executed batik, you long for that nurse who has what's called "the touch", Lydia Castillo is that nurse.

Lydia is unassuming in her talent. She bounces in with a smile and begins humming and massaging your arms with a strong confident touch. She then looks you in the eye and says, "I am going to get this for you, don't you worry". In one stick, what others took 20 minutes to try and failed miserably at your expense, Lydia does in 5 minutes, first try. You look her in the eyes and know that you have been blessed to have your IV performed by someone who knows the intricacies of small rolling veins that collapse and faint like Victorian women in corsets.

Lydia is so thoughtful, that she even takes time above her schedule to insure the patients have healthy IVs before she clocks out, because she is sensitive to the fact that if this is not done, these patients are subject to the vagaries of phlebotomic veins and will continue to get bruised and stabbed in the arm until someone like Lydia comes to the rescue.

Lydia extends this same attitude to being thorough about patient medication and pain. She greets every negative situation with a smile, a firm kind hand and a solution.