An Appreciation

     Back in the mid-1950s, a young woman was making a decision that would lay out the story of the rest of her life. She was trying to decide whether to choose a career in nursing (what would seem to be the practical choice) or to take a great leap of faith and try the more difficult, but no less rewarding and fulfilling, path towards a career in performative music...specifically, the piano. Not to put too fine a point on it, but her choice would have huge ramifications (as many of our choices do). Needless to say, practicality won out. She embarked on a career in nursing, never to look back. To be honest, one of the main reasons for nursing was that she just wanted to make sure she could support herself and her family if the need arose. Janet Phillips chose...wisely.

    Upon getting her degree in nursing and starting her career at Deaconess Hospital in Boston, she slowly began a journey that would become more than just supporting herself and a future family. It became, as it does with many nurses, how she would define herself for the next 63 years. A journey that would take her  to hospital stops in Kansas City, MO., Bristol, Pa., Langhorne Pa., as well as Orlando, FL and Point Pleasant, Pa., and finally back to Bristol. To be fair however, little did she know that her early reasons for choosing this most noble career would come true. 

    You see, a marriage, two kids, a divorce and 10 years later, she would use all of her nursing skills - skills acquired in just those 10 short years after making her fateful decision - to help keep this broken nuclear family together. Mountains of overtime, multiple shifts and an incredible work ethic and focus had ratified that first reason for becoming a nurse. She chose...wisely.

    Nurses are a rare breed. You have to be, well, a nurse, of course, and all of the skills that it requires; but you also have to be a psychologist, a hand-holder, a hard-ass, and in this day and age, a technician. Janet was all of these, and more. In those early years and into the 70s, 80s, and 90s, she rose through the nursing ranks from soldierly nurse, to coronary care unit supervisor, to director of nursing (and I'm sure I missed one or two roles in there); culminating in Chief Operating Officer of Delaware Valley Medical Center. All the while conducting herself with a professionalism and dignity that was not only a credit to her profession but also a credit to her as a person.

    This is where the fun begins! When Delaware Valley was bought by whoever back in the mid-90s, Janet moved on to become the director of an incredible facility called Second Breath in Point Pleasant, Pa., where she oversaw the care of babies and young children born with such physical issues and maladies that it breaks the heart to think about. After a few years, she then decided to join her husband (who had retired a few seconds after he turned 65 and was waiting for his spouse to wise up!) and retire to Florida. Fat chance...the retirement lasted a New York minute and she was working at a local medical center outside Orlando. I could bore you and go on, but needless to say, she played the retirement card 3 or 4 more times over the next 20 years, all the while deciding against it and returning to the profession that needed her as much as she needed it.

    Finally, Janet has seen the light and decided to let the next generation take over. Besides, Vegas was getting tired of setting over/unders on when she would actually call it quits! And to be honest, I held off on writing this in fear that I would look stupid if she turned around one more time and headed back to the hospital! I'd like to think that my persistent needling, cajoling, or outright lecturing was the reason she hung up the clipboard and stethoscope. But it was probably the recent broken arm. She's doing okay, thanks!

    So there it is. I'm not sure how to sum up a career of 63 years that made a difference as much as hers did. And it's not only the lives she helped save and tried to save. It's not only the oversight that any organization like a hospital needs to run properly, which she did with all of the skill and diplomacy any diplomatic office would envy. I haven't even mentioned the number of young nurses, family and non-family alike, that she mentored and guided through their early years of schooling/nursing/training. Making sure they did their jobs the right way. Even if they didn't have to wear those 1970s nurses uniforms with the cool caps! And it's not the fact that she did all of this while keeping two young kids together and grounded and then being a wife and mother of two teenage boys and helping to keep a home together. Oh, and there's the whole grandmother and great-grandmother thing. She's pulled that off, as well.

    As most of you, dear readers, already know...or for those of you that didn't know, have figured out...Janet Phillips is my mother. Feel free to congratulate her. She deserves it. An exemplary career; an exemplary public life; an exemplary wife and mother. The concert pianist would have been very cool, mom. But I'm sure I join more than a few friends, family, and patients when I say again...You chose, wisely!  HAPPY RETIREMENT!