Angels of mercy

By Staff
Bob Stickley
Guest Columnist
While taking my cancer treatments recently at Northwest Alabama Cancer Center, I came upon an angel of mercy in nurse that works in the chemotherapy unit.
Her name is Vickie Clark.
She usually works alone with 15 recliners filled with people taking cancer treatments.
I have spoken with several patients and they all agree that Mrs. Clark is definitely an angel of mercy.
Many of these folks are very sick, but Mrs. Clark works around the unit doing all she can to comfort her patients. Never does she complain and she is always a good nurse, as she should be to get a blanket for someone or to get someone a snack or she’s there just to talk.
She administers the chemotherapy and then monitors it throughout its three-hour ordeal.
Chemotherapy isn’t as bad as it once was. Most people can now handle it pretty well.
One gentleman told me he felt that Mrs. Clark worked as a mother to him.
Mrs. Clark is always smiling and when not working with a patient, she makes the rounds checking to see if everyone is doing OK. She tries to make sure your stay is a comfortable one.
The entire staff at N.W.A. Cancer Center all have that same attitude, including the doctors there.
What the nursing profession needs are more people who remember the oath they took when they received their pin. Having been and out of hospitals, that’s not always the case.
Most nurses have an area to cover that’s too large or they don’t have enough aides to help them.
There is one other angel of mercy that I know. I have known Mrs. Christine Roberts for 30 years.
She works at Russellville Hospital.
I met Christine in the early 1980s when she was a second floor charge nurse. She has always been like a mother to her patients.
She now works in the recovery room in surgery and shows the same undying love and concern for her patients there.
Mrs. Roberts, like Mrs. Clark, is never seen without a smile. You don’t have to worry about being cold in the refrigerator room (surgery) either. Cris Roberts will keep the warm blankets on you.
Having attended church with Cris and her husband, James, for a few years, I have come to see that she is the same person off-duty and is in my opinion, another angel of mercy.
I am sure every hospital has some nurses who stand out as angels of mercy and many patients could stories about those ladies and a few male nurses that could also carry that title of being an angel of mercy.