Victoria Hospitals Foundation by Times Colonist

TIMES COLONIST | timescolonist.com

SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2022

Produced in support of the Victoria Hospitals Foundation

THEY ARE HUMANS FIRST, WHO PUT OTHER HUMANS FIRST

PERSONAL STORIES FROM THE HUMANS BEHIND OUR VICTORIA HOSPITALS’ FRONTLINES THE HUMANS IN OUR HOSPITALS

ver the last few years, we have witnessed an outpouring of support for our hospital staff and care teams. Their strength, resiliency, and selﬂess dedication to local healthcare inspires our work every single day. Our giving community has shown their solidarity in incredible ways since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their generous support has uplifted our care teams, provided them with advanced equipment, and funded new research projects and educational opportunities. They also provided some comfort in times of great stress in the form of warm meals, treats, and gift cards from local businesses. Throughout the pandemic, our collective gratitude compelled many of us to refer to our neighbours on the frontlines as “heroes.” We heard it in the news and saw it written on hearts displayed in windows. But the truth is, the heroes in our hospitals

are human. They have families and friends, they enjoy hobbies and interests, and they have all lived through their own personal triumphs and heartbreaks. This is why I am proud to introduce #HumansFirst, a new initiative that aims to share the authentic stories of our local Victoria caregivers and hospital staff. In the next few pages, I invite you to hear from the humans behind our hospitals’ frontlines. I hope these stories will inspire you as much as they have inspired me. Avery Brohman CEO, Victoria Hospitals Foundation P.S. I also invite you to learn more about me and my story at: victoriahf.ca/ humansﬁrst-avery

Chantal & Shaun: Respiratory Therapists at Victoria General Hospital SPOUSES, DOG-LOVERS, ADVENTURERS, FOOD ENTHUSIASTS, MOTORCYCLE RIDERS, HUMANS

’m sure people laugh when they ﬁrst meet us. Shaun always says I’m the Energizer bunny. I just go-go-go. I’m a busy person, and I talk a lot. And he’s this calm, gentle, quiet giant. We just seem to balance each other out. It’s the same at work. I’m this tornado and everything that’s going to happen is going to happen where I am. But Shaun is this ﬂuffy pink cloud. I’ll hear that seven patients got extubated today and there’s no one left in the ICU. And I’ll be like, “Oh, was Shaun there?” And they’ll say, “Yep, Shaun was there.” Historically, there are people who just seem to get it all, and some people who don’t. We are those two people. We met in the pulmonary function lab that used to be here at the General. I was a student. He graduated in 1997, and I graduated in ‘99. We started working together in the same department, and became friends. I remember saying to another friend that I wished I could just meet somebody like Shaun. That would be perfect. I had never thought about us being together because we worked together. Things happen, and then you still have to work with that person if they go badly. I had actually just applied to go to Arizona. I thought, I’m young, I’ll go work for a couple of years somewhere else. And then Shaun sat me down and said, “Well, actually, I thought we should try dating.” We ended up sitting on his couch all night long. I was on-call for the operating room that morning, but we talked all night and decided that we would try, but that we wouldn’t tell anyone for a few months— until we knew whether it was really going to be a thing or not. Turns out, it was a thing. We’ve worked together those whole 20 years, and we’ve been shift partners for 10 years. We love working together. We mostly work in different units. I love the nursery—the NICU. I do high-risk deliveries. It’s not Shaun’s favorite. He loves to let me have that. But he loves kids and loves to be in the PICU. We’ve always said that Respiratory Therapists (RT) have unusual jobs. We

motorcycle ride, popping see a lot of terrible, sad things. We go into a winery up-Island, to every code, every trauma, every bad going for lunch, and delivery. Having someone who you then coming home and can really talk to about the snuggling with our dog reality of what we do, and while we listen to music. the gravity of it—it’s like We’re big into music—we therapy. The good and don’t have a TV in our the bad. main area. He pours me a There’s something glass of wine and we listen about having your to music and the dog’s there. I person there. They love being on the bike with him. have your back. It I feel very safe with him. He lived doesn’t matter if it’s a very rural life growing up, so he’s three o’clock in the been riding since he was four. morning and they’ve He loves his garden too. He’s got quite been up all night and a green thumb, and he’s big into bonsais. all of a sudden there’s When we moved into our house, my uncle a trauma. It’s just a nice said to us, “You only get about 30 gardens feeling to have them there. in your life. You have to make the most We go of them.” So that to codes and became our goal, to traumas where have this little oasis the person passes We only dated for in our backyard. A away. You learn to eight months before he real love of ours is compartmentalize. proposed, and then we married six just taking care of You go back months after that. Last year was our yard. upstairs and now our 20th wedding anniversary. We I also love you’re having didn’t get to do anything because entertaining. That’s lunch, and most of the pandemic, but we’ll celebrate been one of my people would say, down the road. biggest struggles “How can you through the possibly go eat pandemic. Shaun is after that?” But it’s more of a homebody. the nature of our job. But he’s so gracious. We have a fur baby. Poppy. She’s a He opens his home and he never minds Portuguese water dog. She’s deﬁnitely when I have parties and people over. our focus. My passion is cooking, and It’s been hard to watch. We were it’s what I spend the most time doing outside of work. Shaun likes eating, so it’s here for SARS, MERS, H1N1, but we’d never seen anything remotely close to a win-win. We also have a garden, and a motorcycle that gets a lot of use. COVID-19. The ﬁrst six months were Our ideal day off would be going for a scary. We were doing intubations with

doctors, and even though you put all of this protection on, we didn’t know if it was enough. We didn’t see anyone for months and months. We were so scared to put our families at risk. The last few months have been pretty rough. We’ve been through some struggles with Shaun’s family. It’s hard because it’s overshadowing for us right now. Last October, his dad fell, hit his head, and ended up passing away. He had a huge bleed. But the hospital family at VGH really embraced us. We had emergency room nurses, doctors, and care aids helping us. And then we had ICU doctors stopping by because they recognized us, asking if they could help. We had nurses stopping by to give us a hug. We realized we have a family here. Everybody was just so supportive. When Shaun was having a hard time, one of our managers said, “You have devoted your lives to helping people. Now we’re going to help you.” That really stuck with me. Shaun has always said that every family member we see in Emergency when we’re in those trauma bays is probably having the worst day of their life. Whether it’s their grandma or mom or husband or sister. Even if someone isn’t dying, it’s traumatic. My family always used to joke that people don’t know what an RT is unless they’ve been sick enough to need an RT. They always call us the MacGyvers of the hospital. We can put together any piece of equipment. We can add connectors and ﬁgure out ways to put things together. We are very technical. But because of the nature of our job being in trauma and those awful situations, that’s where the therapist part comes in. When you’re caring for these people and ventilating them, you get attached to your patients and very involved with them. At the end of the day, it’s somebody’s life. We are running machines that are life-saving machines—and that patient is somebody’s person.