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The Top Hospital in America
By Joe Bargmann
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An emergency angioplasty was in order, putting Lilling at precisely the right place at the right time. Last year, 3,000 angioplasties were performed at North Shore. Through a large artery at the groin, Katz fed a tube containing a whisper-thin wire toward Max's heart. The surgeon monitored his progress on a video screen—a $100-million bit of cutting-edge medical technology available at North Shore and only two other hospitals in the world. "It's almost like playing Nintendo," Katz says. Carefully, he pushed the wire through the blockages, widened the openings with small metal balloons, and inserted three stents. Immediately, the blood began flowing freely. Within two weeks, Lilling was recuperating at his Miami condo.
"Everything was explained to me in great detail," says the patient. "It was reassuring. I'm not one to be in a hospital, but this experience was unbelievable. Unbelievable."
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Extensive Care
Staffers Robert Toy (top), emergency
medical technician, and Luz Mirbaha,
laboratory support associate; Tita Monti,
president and founder, Don Monti
Research Foundation. |
THE HOSPITAL'S HUMAN TOUCH
It was the hospital's human touch, not its technology, that saved Andy DiMarino's life. The CAT scan that nurse Debbie Bothe had insisted on revealed that DiMarino had, in fact, suffered a stroke. Swelling tissue was blocking the flow of spinal fluid through his brain, causing pressure that would kill him within hours, if not sooner. The neurologist ordered an emergency ventriculostomy to drain the fluid, and two surgeons performed the procedure in a curtained anteroom. As Robin DiMarino watched, the doctors hand-cranked a stainless-steel drill into her husband's skull.
After Andy was wheeled to the intensive care unit, Robin returned to his old unit to see Bothe. The women embraced once again. "Please come over and visit us," Robin said.
For a week, Andy lay unconscious in the ICU, hooked to a respirator. Tubes ran into his nose and out of his head. Every half hour or so, a nurse stopped by to ask him to move his toe or open his eyes. There was no response.
Robin became a fixture at the hospital. To her, it always seemed like midday in the ICU as the energetic staffers went about their duties, playing music and remaining upbeat, despite the illness and injury around them. Debbie Bothe, whose nursing duties kept her working on a different floor, nevertheless checked in frequently. She became Robin's sounding board.
By day eight, Robin was losing hope. She reached down and held her husband's hand.
"Andy," she said, "squeeze my hand if you know I'm here."
His fingers closed around hers. Robin's heart jumped.
"Squeeze again," she said, and he did. "I love you," she said, and he squeezed even harder.
The next day, he was taken off the respirator. Andy began gradually to regain consciousness, and when he opened his eyes he saw his wife standing over him, smiling. He felt as if he'd entered the emergency room a couple of hours before.
The first time Andy saw nurse Bothe, he asked, "Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Debbie," she said casually. "I'm going off my shift. I just wanted to see how you were doing." Bothe began bringing Andy bagels in the morning. She called Robin at home to see how she was doing. After finishing her shift, she would drop by to shave Andy.
Says Robin today, "She's an angel. God willing, all the good things she did will come back around to her."
Andy eventually was moved to the neurology floor. Nearly three weeks after he was admitted, he returned home.
The DiMarinos' medical ordeal was at an end, but their friendship with Bothe endures. Says Andy, who has returned to work full-time, "It's like we've known her forever."
Bothe shrugs off the suggestion that she's an exceptional nurse. She credits the supportive atmosphere at North Shore with encouraging her to do good work. "This is from my heart," she says, pressing her hands to her chest. "I never want to work anywhere else but here."
Joe Bargmann has written and edited health-related stories for Glamour, Redbook, and GQ. He is executive editor of Golf for Women magazine.
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