A few days ago, I won a toy, while engaging in one of the activities here at Hilltop House. This little toy reminds me, in its own whimsical way, of a time past when one of our nurses at Parkland Hospital wanted to do a study to validate the safety and effectiveness of allowing family members to attend and witness critical resuscitation procedures of their family members being treated in the emergency department. Long standing medical tradition forbade such a practice.
The surgeon in charge of the resuscitation area refused to let the study be done. "You can do this study when pigs can fly," he told the nurse.
The nurse persisted in her efforts to do the study. When the direction of the emergency room changed to another department the nurse at last received permission to do the study, which soon became the famous Parkland Family Presence study, a research project that changed practice in many hospitals across the nation.
When the study was published, we had a party honoring this nurse and all of the research team involved in the study. In the middle of the party table sat a large cake decorated with flying pigs.
Now I have my own flying pig to remind me to never give up.
So off I go on my Rollator to practice walking: persist, persist, persist. As I stride off on the walker, I hear the faint flapping of pig wings overhead.
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