Gifts from the heart

Mathis Winkler

The call came at 12:15 p.m.

“Oh great,” nurse Julie Dohrman thought on Jan. 9 when another nurse

told her that someone from Western Medical Center in Santa Ana was on the

line. “I’m getting a new patient and they haven’t told me.”

Getting transfer requests wasn’t unusual for Dohrman, a Huntington

Beach resident who’d started working at Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach

last September. She looked for a piece of paper to write down some

initial information on the patient and picked up the receiver.

“The trauma surgeon wants to talk to you,” a nurse said on the other

end.

“That’s weird,” Dohrman thought. Usually nurses just passed along the

details themselves.

After a brief silence, the surgeon came on.

“Are you Phil Dohrman’s wife?” he asked, and Dohrman fell to her

knees.

As she cried, crouching on the floor, the surgeon explained to Dohrman

that a loose big rig tire had gone through the windshield of her

husband’s truck, smashing his head while he drove on the Santa Ana

Freeway near the Sand Canyon Avenue exit in Irvine at around 11 a.m.

The blow had cracked open the construction worker’s skull. Luckily, a

retired fire fighter driving behind Dohrman had applied pressure on the

wound to prevent fatal blood loss.

“My name is Phil, my wife is a nurse at Hoag,” was all he had been

able to utter before falling unconscious again, the surgeon said. Her

husband had been taken into emergency surgery and would be moved to the

hospital’s intensive care unit. Could she leave work to go be with him?

Leaving her post at Hoag’s telemetry unit, one of the hospital’s

busiest, seemed almost impossible to Dohrman.

She and her colleagues were always swamped, as they took care of

patients recovering from open heart surgery, heart attacks and other

cardiac problems.

But while Dohrman -- beside herself -- couldn’t think clearly about

what to do next, the other nurses began to take charge. They hugged her

and began organizing Dohrman’s departure.

“What do you need us to do?” Dohrman heard one of the nurses asking.

“Give me your paperwork . . . Let’s do a reality check here . . . Who do

we need to call to come pick you up?”

“I can drive,” Dohrman sobbed in response.

“No, you can’t,” came the reply.

A half hour later -- to Dohrman, it seemed like forever -- a neighbor

picked her up and took her to her husband’s side.

Since then, the couple’s rarely been separated.

Nurses on her ward, most of whom Dohrman doesn’t even know, have

volunteered to take on Dohrman’s shifts to allow her to take care of her

husband at their Surf City home. Feb. 6 was her first day back since the

accident.

MEANINGFUL HELP

Dohrman’s departure caused her supervisors to jump into action. Seven

nurses take care of about five patients each at any given time, so

Dohrman’s patients were quickly assigned to others on the ward.

But while Dohrman had already accumulated some “paid time off” -- a

combination of vacation days, sick days and personal days -- her

colleagues soon realized that she couldn’t stay away from work too long

without jeopardizing her job.

One of the nighttime supervisors approached Lori Bocchicchio, the

department’s assistant director, to find out if she and the other nurses

could transfer some of their own off-time to help Dohrman through this

trying time.

After checking with hospital administrators, Bocchicchio got back to

her nurses and told them that, yes, donating time would be fine.

Since then, about 10 of Dohrman’s colleagues have already given up

their free time in blocks ranging from two to 24 hours.

Altogether, they’ve donated about 72 hours -- enough to keep Dohrman

in the clear so far. She’s also been able to stay on as a full-time

employee, which entitles her to Hoag’s benefits package. Since employees

also accumulate “paid time off” while they’re on it, the donations help

Dohrman to build her own bank of free days again. Similar time donations

have taken place at the hospital before.

“If [Dohrman] has to continue to only work two to three days a week,

we could continue this as long as people are willing,” said Bocchicchio,

adding that the time-donating nurses have asked to remain anonymous. Even

Dohrman doesn’t know who’s been helping her out.

Some of the nurses have summed up their feelings in a single sentence,

said Bocchicchio.

“Wow! That could have been one of us,” they have said to her.

“They’re talking about realizing how quickly things can change,”

Bocchicchio said. “You might find yourself in a position where you need

help. They talked about getting a fruit basket to show that they care,

but [time] donation is probably most helpful, more lasting and

meaningful.”

A TRYING TIME

Sitting in her living room, which is filled with angel prints,

pillows, candles and statues, Dohrman said it was difficult for her to

express her appreciation for the help she’s received.

“I thought I’d lose my job,” she said. “I had no idea when I was going

to come back. . .I was so worried about it. I knew [Phil] wasn’t going to

bring in any income.”

While her husband has been recovering at home for the last two weeks,

he’s still at risk for seizures and can’t be left alone.

“Right now, it’s like having a child,” Dohrman said. “It’s just really

hard to change from being a wife to a mother and caretaker . . . it’s

tough, very tough.”

A few minutes into the conversation, her husband walks slowly into the

room. Dressed in sweat pants and a T-shirt, his hair cropped short from

the surgery, his left arm still in a cast, it’s difficult to recognize

Dohrman as the smiling husband in the framed photographs that stand on

tables around the room.

He’s on around-the-clock pain medication to stop the constant

headaches, sleeps about 15 hours a day and has difficulty collecting his

thoughts.

Five days a week, Phil Dohrman attends a therapy center in Orange that

specializes in brain injuries. Right now, Dohrman’s expected to attend

the center for at least another three months. It’s still unclear whether

he’ll fully recover.

“Our lives have completely changed,” said Julie Dohrman. “We used to

have our big Friday night -- usually Tuesdays. That’s when we would talk.

Now it’s just taking care of him, dealing with disability issues,

workers’ compensation, paperwork.”

Plans to go on a cruise and have children in the near future vanished

after the accident.

A big birthday bash -- Dohrman just turned 30 and her husband is 38

this week -- has also been called off.

“We were going to have a big party,” Dohrman said. “We were going to

rent a karaoke machine and a DJ, but he can’t tolerate noise . . . We

kind of just have to take it day by day.”

Realizing his wife’s disappointment, Phil Dohrman had a need to

respond.

“Oh, we’ll do something,” he said quietly.

“You’re such a sweetie,” came her response.

GETTING BACK ON SCHEDULE

Last week, Dohrman finally returned to Hoag.

“Honestly, I think I need time away from all this, cause its very

stressful,” she said. “I need to get back on schedule and start doing

something for myself.”

For now, she’ll only work two days a week. During her lunch break

recently, she already seemed to be back on track.

“It’s good to be back,” she said, smiling. “I got to laugh and be with

my friends again.”

When she arrived her first day back, there was hugging and crying, she

said. Her colleagues had brought her a bouquet made out of cookies to

welcome her back.

But then things quickly returned to normal.

“There’s no messing around,” she said and laughed. “There’s things to

do. People to save and take care of.”

LOVE VIA VOICE MAIL

On the morning of the accident, Phil Dohrman kissed his sleeping wife

goodbye as usual before leaving the house at around 5 a.m.

An hour later, as Julie Dohrman was driving to work, her husband

called her cell phone and left a message.

“I love you,” she later heard him saying. “I’m thinking about you.”

During the days following the accident, when Phil lay unconscious in

the intensive care unit, Dohrman kept wondering whether she’d ever hear

her husband speak again.

“It might be the last time I hear him talk,” she thought.

She still hasn’t erased the call.