Valley Stream hospital sends nurses to help in Houston

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A group of five nurses and surgical technicians from Long Island Jewish-Valley Stream went to Houston for a week starting on Labor Day, to relieve overwhelmed staff at MD Anderson Cancer Center who were recovering from Hurricane Harvey.

“Many of their employees are unable to commute to work because of the flooding,” said Michael Dowling, Northwell Health’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Many others have been working non-stop for nearly a week to care for patients.”

Volunteers were selected based on MD Anderson’s needs, according to Steve Bello, the executive director of Long Island Jewish-Valley Stream. “Anything that we were asked, we tried to deliver on,” Bello said.

One of the five selected to go to Houston from Long Island Jewish-Valley Stream was Sandra Marion-Armstrong, an operating room nurse. “I didn’t hesitate,” she said. “ … I felt like this was a calling for me. I wanted to do something, I wanted to give back and this was the time for me to do it.”

Marion-Armstrong, of West Hempstead, said she was able to go to Texas because her sons are now all in their twenties. Still, she said, they worried about her trip. “My kids did not want me to go, they were more afraid for me,” she said.

But she went anyway, and said that she did not regret it. “I would do it again without hesitation,” she said.

During her week in Houston, Marion-Armstrong took care of about 300 cancer patients whose operations were delayed during the storm. After the storm ended, the hospital was trying to re-schedule the operations, some of which she worked on for more than ten hours. “We were really a big help to them,” Marion-Armstrong said, adding that one of the nurses she worked with in Houston had her house totaled from the storm.

“At the end of the day, I have to count my blessings because I’m not going through what they‘re going through,” she said. “They have been through so much and they are still going to go through so much through the years as they get their lives together.”

Emmie Dimayuga-Corso, a Farmingdale resident and the assistant nurse manager of Long Island Jewish- Valley Stream’s intensive care unit and coronary care unit, volunteered in MD Anderson’s oncology unit. Some of the doctors and nurses she worked with, she said, were trapped in the hospital for four to five days and would only get about three or four hours of sleep each night.

“It changed a lot of us, how we view the world and our lives and it just made us more grateful,” Dimayuga-Corso said. “If anyone’s thinking of volunteering for something like this, definitely do it.”

Steve Bello said there are currently plans to send volunteers to Florida, where Hurricane Irma dumped more than 15-inches of rain and left the state with an estimated $30 to $50 billion in damages, according to published reports. “We haven’t been asked right now to help down in Irma, but whether it’s Irma or any other kind of natural disaster that we can lend our expertise to, we would be more than happy to help,” he said.