Page 20 - White Plains Hospital Annual Report 2020-2021
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HEALING MR. HEALY
Throughout his terrifying ordeal, COVID survivor Sean Healy says the staff’s care and compassion were a constant source of hope on his path to recovery.
After 32 years as a nurse Kimiko (Kimi) Williams, BSN, RN, knows that certain cases stand out as particularly memorable. “There are a handful of patients who have
touched me in my career that I know I’ll remember forever. Sean Healy is one of those patients,” says Williams, Nurse Manager on 5I, where Healy spent 28 days battling COVID. “I think everyone on the unit recognized quickly that Sean was just a special person who really, really wanted to live.”
Healy—a Thornwood res-
ident who owns a travel
agency and a tax prepara-
tion business in the Bronx,
can’t say enough about the care he received from Williams, as well as every staff member he encoun- tered at the Hospital.
“I kept telling Kimi, ‘You have a lot of incredible individuals within your team, and there is no chink in your armor.’ It was remarkable because everybody was passionate and empathetic and extremely professional from start to finish. Everybody had a positive attitude; even the cleaning staff was super friendly. The food was great, too,” Healy says.
“I swear, it was like being at a five-star hotel,” he jokes.
Healy first came to White Plains Hospital in early December after testing positive for COVID a few days earlier. With typical COVID symptoms but in relatively stable shape, Healy was given the oral steroid albuterol and sent home to self-isolate and monitor his pulse to be sure it didn’t drop below 90. When it dipped into the low 80s just two days later, Healy returned to the Emergency Depart- ment and was admitted
on December 11.
“I didn’t know where I was
for the first week, I was in and out of consciousness. I was on the verge of going on a ventilator, but the doctors pulled me through,” Healy recalls. “The doctors were great—especially my primary doctors, Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Yu; they communicated with my family every step of the way.”
With Healy in rough shape when he first got to 5I, Williams recalls that the staff “was pretty worried about him. He needed a lot of oxygen; he wound up getting to the point where he was on the highest oxygen possible.” Healy himself was preparing for the worst possible outcome:
“There are a handful of patients that have touched me in my career that I know I’ll remember forever. Sean Healy is one of those patients.”
— KIMIKO (KIMI) WILLIAMS, BSN, RN —
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WHITE PLAINS HOSPITAL
