LOUISVILLE, Ky. — This week, we're spotlighting the crucial role nurses play in saving lives and providing hope to patients and their families.
Ask anyone who works with Mary Jo McIver and they'll tell you she does more than help mend hearts, she is the heart of the cardiovascular team at Norton Children's Hospital.
"Mary Jo is one of the reasons why I stay on the heart team," Vanessa Bobblett, a surgical technician said.
It's not hard to see why.
"She goes above and beyond for our heart team. Doesn't matter what role. She will step up as an anesthesia tech. She will run to the pharmacy or to the blood bank and get stuff that we need. She'll help out in any way," Bobblett said. "Anybody that comes through this door, Mary Jo is willing to help you."
"It seems like it was just the other day when I became the assistant nurse manager over cardiac," McIver said.
It's not a job. It's a passion, going on 33 years.
"I love hearts," she said, pointing to her scrub cap to her heart-shaped earrings.
She began her career as a nurse's aide at Norton Children's while in nursing school at UofL, and graduated in 1991. McIver said she knew from the start she wanted to make a difference after watching her father go through intensive care years ago.
"He wound up with a trach on a ventilator in intensive care at a hospital, and I remember being a 15-year-old going in to see my dad. Nobody ever explained what anything was. It's terrifying to see. And I remember just holding his toe afraid to touch anything because of all the machines, all the tubes," McIver said.
Today, it's all about easing those fears for other families.
"I'm like, 'No, come in, don't be afraid,' you know, to hold their hand, to give them a kiss, or a hug. 'Let me tell you what all this stuff is' just to try to help them understand what was going on," McIver said.
It's always her goal to make the OR less scarier than it may feel.
"The little boys who are at the point where they do video games, I'm like, 'Oh, look at my monitor. You're gonna put mountains on my monitor, and you're gonna get a score. Let's see what your score is,'" McIver said. "It's the oxygen probe, and the little humps start, and usually it's like, 99, you know, or 100. And I'm like, 'Oh, you got my high score for the day!'"
Those are the good days. And then others are just plain hard.
"I'll go home and ask my kids, can I have a hug? You know, I need a hug," McIver said.
Reading a letter from the parents of a young donor, who chose to give life to someone else.
"I would just stand there and cry," she said. "And then, when they put the new heart in, and then when it warms up, and it starts to beat. I mean, it's amazing. It's just a different world back here."
And Mary Jo has a hand in all of it.
"She's willing to stay here no matter what," Bobblett said. "Sometimes, we have to tell her to 'Go home. We got this!'"
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