By
Steve Melnick |
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| Dolly
Arro is a busy nurse, heading Christopher Reeve's
staff of two full-time RNs and a group of per diem
nurses. She is always on call. |
Dolly Arro, RN, had a pretty routine life for an ICU
nurse with 10 years' experience. She felt settled into
her career and comfortable enough to occasionally take
on part-time home health assignments.
One day, a co-worker offered her a private home health
assignment with a vent-dependent quadriplegic. She accepted
the assignment without even knowing the patient's name.
Before leaving to go to her new patient's home, she
telephoned her co-worker to double-check the details
of the assignment.
"Do you know who Superman is?" Arro's friend
asked matter-of-factly. "Superman" was a well-known
movie even in the Philippines, where Arro grew up.
Arro immediately knew what her friend was saying. She
was going to be Superman's nurse.
"I couldn't even talk," Arro said, as she
reminisced about the moment she found out her patient
would be actor Christopher Reeve, who was paralyzed
in a horseback riding accident in 1995.
Seven years later, just as Reeve is turning 50 and
reporting that he has regained some sense of touch and
the ability to move one of his fingers, the Philippines-born
nurse finds herself a reluctant celebrity because of
her association with her famous boss.
"She is worth her weight in gold," Reeve
said of Arro in a recent documentary, "Courageous
Steps," narrated by the star and directed by his
son Matthew Reeve.
Reeve, a fan of his medical staff, encouraged Arro
to talk to NURSEWEEK about her relationship with him.
Just as Reeve isn't the typical home health patient,
Arro didn't find home health nursing in the typical
way.
She first arrived in New York on a cold, damp December
day in 1985. But it wouldn't be just the weather that
would come as a shock to the nurse who described her
first moments in a U.S. hospital as if she were Alice
in Wonderland, surveying her strange environment with
wonder and fear.
Arro was in awe of what would seem to any American
a simple advance in technology. Her medical experience
in the Philippines, limited to the rudimentary resources
of a government hospital, did not prepare her for the
possibilities of modern medical technology. "I
was blown away by equipment like electronic thermometers,"
she said.
As Reeve's chief nurse, Arro has come a long way in
her career from her first days as a nurse in the Philippines.
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