Issue
Floating on a river of uncertainty
May. 31, 2011—One year after Barbara McCafferty and her husband, Dave Paczko, were rescued from the chest-high waters filling their home, the couple is still swamped by the financial and emotional aftermath of Nashville’s historic floods. McCafferty, a post-op assessment nurse in Vanderbilt’s Digestive Disease clinic, said the one-story house near Percy Warner Park was inundated with...
Mary Teloh, overseer of History of Medicine room, retires after 38 years
May. 31, 2011—Mary Teloh, who worked for 38 years as a librarian at the Eskind Biomedical Library and its predecessor, the Medical Center Library, proudly shows off a crystal bowl she received at a retirement reception May 27. Teloh is known for her devotion to the history of medicine, and the history of VUMC, and was the...
Zoe without the zzzzzzzzzz’s: My storm-phobic dog creates sleep-deprived days—for me
May. 31, 2011—You know how advocates for pets are always citing figures showing that pet owners live longer? I am completely puzzled about how this could possibly be so. One example: one of the keys to a long and healthy life is getting enough sleep. I cannot recall a single occasion when a pet has helped me...
So many people did so much
May. 31, 2011—It was teamwork that helped Karl Boehme, Ph.D., and his family get through those chaotic first days after their Bellevue home took on three feet of water in last May’s historic flood. And it was teamwork that helped them get through the months-long rebuilding process. Family members, friends and co-workers in the Division of Pediatric...
Giving patients a hand
May. 31, 2011—The human hand has five digits, 27 bones, and a complicated system of nearly 80 tendons and muscles, and Peggy Haase and Skip Brown have spent the last 20 years caring for each and every one of them. Haase and Brown were the first occupational therapists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to become certified hand...
Cyril Stewart finds labor of love in Franklin Theatre
May. 31, 2011—Cyril Stewart is a guy who appreciates old theaters. “My wife and I had our first date at the Belle Meade Theater,” he says, referring to the gone-but-still-lamented movie palace on Harding Road in Nashville. “She was 15, I was 16.” Later, when he was studying architecture at the University of Tennessee, he was involved...
New hardwoods, new neighbors
May. 31, 2011—Right after the flood, Regina Bailey temporarily had to move her belongings to her lawn. And one night a police patrol caught someone trying to loot some of it. Bailey, a medical receptionist in the Emergency Department at Vanderbilt University Hospital, was only recently summoned as a witness in the trial. In Bailey’s East Nashville...
Turning something bad into something good
May. 31, 2011—On May 2, 2010, Harold “Cookie” Warpool stood in the basement of The Vanderbilt Clinic with water above his knees for nine hours. A year later, the plant services employee says the facility is nicer than it has ever been. “We took something bad and made something good out of it,” Warpool says of the...
Grateful for support
May. 27, 2011—Chris Carey, M.D., a General Surgery resident, is ready to make a fresh start in Oklahoma City. Carey’s time in Nashville has been hard. In August 2009 his wife of 13 years, Niki, died from liver cancer. In May 2010 the Nashville flood wiped out his Bellevue home. Four months later, as he was moving...
Sunday dinner tradition is back
May. 27, 2011—Barbara Carr couldn’t wait to get back to hosting Sunday dinners. It had been a tradition in her family for as long as she could remember. All of that changed when the May floods took over her home, leaving her with only the clothes on her back. “It was a task,” said an exasperated Carr,...