This commentary is by Krystyna Davenport Brown of Charlotte.
Thank you. For four years I have been struggling with how to say thank you to the health care workers that saved my then-6-year-old daughter’s life. I have started and stopped so many times, maybe it was too emotional, maybe it was too soon, too late, too selfish compared to world events, compared to life events
I am a private person, maybe I didn’t want to let people in, let people see my family vulnerable, maybe I didn’t want my neighbors and my community to ask questions, to pity me, to pity my child, to feel different. This is not a commentary on the Green Mountain Care Board but rather the Board’s decision is a catalyst for me to be brave and to share gratitude, appreciation and awe that we as Vermonters have a gift.
My young family and I moved to Vermont in 2017. We saw the opportunity, but we panicked — at the cost of housing, at the cost of living, and so we researched the education system and the benefits of a rural lifestyle and yes, we researched our health care options. I never could have predicted that the decision to move here would be the greatest decision we ever made due to the care, compassion, professionalism and knowledge of our health care workers.
On Labor Day 2020, my daughter was in a traumatic accident. My husband and I called UVMMC in a panic begging them to tell us what to do. They calmly told me “we are waiting at the door for you, we will take care of her.” And they did — we pulled up to the emergency room and the triage nurse was waiting for us. He helped me bring my daughter to the ER.
Being in the height of the pandemic my daughter’s twin sister and my husband could not come in with me. I was ALONE, my goodness I was ALONE, but I never felt alone. A health care team, who was weathered and exhausted from the pandemic, treated me like family. The nurses, the facilities staff, the techs, everyone I encountered saw me, heard me, and, I can honestly say, loved and cared for my child like family.
My family’s life and my daughter’s life will forever be altered. She is working through her trauma both emotionally and physically. We rely on our health care system to support her. We need our academic medical center and our community hospitals in order to care for our neighbors and our communities. In the darkest most vulnerable times, the staff at our hospitals and home health agencies step in to help us, to comfort us and to hold us. That is a gift we cannot afford to lose.
To our health care workers, thank you for healing, thank you for loving, thank you for giving a piece of yourself every day, and thank you for helping me and my family be brave.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Krystyna Davenport Brown: Thank you to our health care workers.