My father suffered a severe heart attack and was transferred to UH from Aultman Hospital in Canton. I have no cardiac experience and was amazed at the one-on-one care he received in the Cardio-thoracic ICU. After a few days and getting him off the ECMO machine, they were able to move him to the Cardiac stepdown ICU, which is where my sister and I met Taylor. He had a nursing student with him and along with him educating his student, he was able to educate us as to what was happening. Taylor was extremely easy to talk to and let us know from the beginning what to expect with our dad's recovery, and that the road ahead was not going to be a straight one.

Eventually, we made the decision to Trach our dad to get him off of being intubated... upon arriving Taylor informed us that his Trach site was continuing to bleed, and it was definitely a shock to see. When we asked Taylor if he was worried, he explained that with all his blood thinners and anticoagulants it was to be expected, but assured us that he was keeping an eye on his blood work and vitals. Dad seemed to be doing better after they were able to get the bleeding stopped, and on Wednesday, my dad had a great day! He was responding to my sister with head nods, and even smiled.

Taylor was on again that night when things started to go south.. Taylor called and explained that he was on every medication to keep his blood pressure up, and it was still trending down.. he was on 100% oxygen and was only registering at 89%.. and.. he was still a full code. He explained that if they had to do CPR on him, again (he already coded twice) the outcome would not be very promising. So my sister and I left at 5 am on Thursday and made our way up to UH. Taylor called as we were just getting into Cleveland and asked how close we were as Dad was still trending downward. Upon arriving to the unit, Taylor met us and explained everything that was going on.. he had the crash cart outside of Dad's room and the paddles in the room and plugged in. We decided to change dad to a DNRCC-A, and Taylor stayed sometime after his shift to make sure not only dad was ok, but that my sister and I were as well... Did I mention we had just lost our mom 10 weeks prior?

A little after 9 am, Dad passed away peacefully, with my sister and I by his side, holding his hands... he had just turned 64. Taylor was personable, down to earth, answered every question we had, no matter how many times we called and most of all, showed a generous amount of compassion to us and our dad. Nurses like Taylor are what the profession is all about. His enthusiasm and patience with his student nurse were one of the very first things I noticed, along with his ability to be "on our level" when explaining everything that was going on. We never felt as if our concerns were ignored or not taken seriously. Although, in the end, we still lost our dad, we got a few more precious moments and memories with him. We never had any issues with any of the staff, but Taylor went above and beyond to make sure we were always aware of what was happening and that we were mentally and emotionally prepared.