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Marugaki characterized his nursing as straightforward.
No bonds beyond the nurse-client relationship. "My
work stays at work," he said.
Nonetheless, he came to know Schechterle through post-discharge
visits as "a very nice guy, very appreciative of
what we've done. A really good guy."
Discharge was still months away when Schechterle was
moved from intensive care. At hand, though, was the
beginning of an enduring patient-nurse relationship
with Sara Barron, an LPN. As a registry nurse, she had
worked throughout Maricopa Medical Center. But she chose
its Arizona Burn Center as a steady home when she began
school full time to pursue an associate's degree and
her RN license. "I knew I could get the best skills
and get good training," she said of the burn center's
team approach to care.
Besides physicians and other nurses, patient care incorporates
physical and occupational therapists, social workers,
psychologists, nutrition and pharmacy consultants, respiratory
therapists, chaplains and volunteers.
As an RN since November, Barron has moved up to care
for critically ill burn patients and said she plans
to pursue a bachelor's degree and possibly a master's
degree when her young daughter is older.
Schechterle was an education in himself. He characterized
himself as a "baptism by fire" for Barron,
then 21 years old. "I know she was very young and
she was deeply impacted by me as her patient, as well
as I was impacted by her. Now we've become lifelong
friends."
He was no stranger to nurses. A year of patrolling
the streets of Phoenix often took him to emergency rooms,
where he witnessed the compassion of RNs. Barron reinforced
his respect, admiration and understanding of the value
of a good nurse and good care, he said. "I was
seeing it from a different perspective. Witnessing it
as a police officer is one thing; as a patient, she
really drove home the power that they have over your
entire recovery process."
Barron was Schechterle's everything. His eyes in the
first few weeks out of the drug-induced coma remained
sewed shut to protect them. "It was very scary
for him to hear the door open and close and not know
who was coming in and out of the room," Barron
said. But the sound of the door and her voice at the
beginning of her 7 a.m.-to-7:30 p.m. shifts came to
mark each seemingly interminable day of recovery.
The week before he was moved to the burn center's medical
unit, Schechterle was able to speak. Barron said they
spent a lot of time talking, she trying to explain what
had happened to him. "He had no concept of his
injuries because he couldn't see himself," she
said.
She changed his dressings, bathed, fed and dressed
him, while also being assigned one or two other patients.
After a couple of busy weeks as Schechterle's eyes and
his narrow window to the tragic night he doesn't remember,
Barron said she began to realize that "Jason is
the most amazing man I have met. He is very humbling.
He is very caring. And he is the reason that he is here.
"I think the biggest thing I always told him was
that he is here for a reason," she said. "There
is a purpose that he lived and survived the unsurvivable.
He needs to remember that every day. He had this traumatic
injury, but he can overcome it and better other people
from this tragedy."
Schechterle said Barron took time with him, making
him feel like a normal person and not just a patient
in a bed.
Barron said they talked about attending Camp Courage
together, a children's burn camp underwritten by the
nonprofit Foundation for Burns & Trauma. Camp was
not possible the first year after his injury, but last
June they did attend together, in Prescott, where the
Arizona daytime temperatures are cooler and more comfortable
for burn patients. Schechterle shared his accident and
recovery with young burn survivors who gathered for
a week of fellowship and to deal with life-altering
disfigurements.
"It wasn't the severity of Jason's burns that
scared me," Barron said. "It was the stigma
that would follow him that scared me."
When he finally was able to see himself in a mirror,
Barron's patient stood face to featureless face with
a stranger. The heart of a husband, father of two children
and a police officer beat inside him. Outwardly, though,
he was not himself.
Just before Memorial Day this year, Schechterle was
undergoing yet more reconstructive surgery on his nose
and ears at the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center in suburban
Scottsdale. Barron said her relationship with Suzie
developed as mutual support and quickly blossomed into
personal friendship. Their daughters are playmates.
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