After daughter's passing, two-time cancer survivor creates safer PPE
(CNN)When Kezia Fitzgerald's 1-year-old daughter Saoirse was fighting a stage four neuroblastoma tumor, Kezia knew she wanted to try to do everything in her power to form Saoirse's treatment as comfortable as possible.
So when Saoirse's catheters and vascular access lines started getting into the way while she played, Kezia put her sewing hobby to the test. She made a garment that kept Saoise's lines in situ, preventing tangling and allowing her to play.
With the input of the doctors and nurses overseeing Saoirse's treatment, Kezia soon perfected a garment that became the talk about the hospital. The garment effectively decreased the danger of line injury and infection, while allowing patients freedom and luxury.
"It made such a difference in our lives as parents," Kezia said. "It was such a lot a neighborhood of our treatment journey."
Though Saoirse lost her battle with cancer months later, on the great days she was a minimum of ready to play normally.
A two-time cancer survivor herself, Kezia's experience being both a patient and caretaker gave her empathy for the struggles of medical treatment. With the success of the garment she made for her daughter, Kezia started brooding about how she could expand her desire to assist into other products.
What began as a labor of affection for her daughter grew into Carolina, a corporation dedicated to creating medical garments that prioritize patient and clinician comfort and safety.
More than 10 years since the company's inception, Kezia's medical garments are getting used in hospitals nationwide, with partnerships at places like the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and therefore the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital at the University of Michigan school of medicine
Carolina's latest garments are a product of multiple quarantines. When Kezia's Hodgkin's lymphoma relapsed, she underwent a somatic cell transplant, forcing her into 100-day isolation to guard her weakened system. Just three days out of that isolation, the Covid-19 pandemic began and she or he began another lockdown.
"I was just preparing to be able to begin of isolation and was seeing the sunshine at the top of that tunnel, then everybody else had to pack up too," she said.
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Despite the emotional exhaustion of fighting cancer and an epidemic, Kezia quickly asked how she could use her company to assist keep frontline workers safe.
Because the Carolina manufacturer in Massachusetts was considered an important business, it had been permitted to remain open. Kezia wanted to require advantage of that chance to assist and spent months meeting with PPE experts and lecture clinicians about what changes they wanted in their medical garments.
"They've saved my life multiple times, they helped treat our daughter, so these are folks that we're connected with which we feel thankful for. We felt like we actually wanted to assist them reciprocally," she said.
From her meetings, Kezia found that while there was an enormous movement to assist provide masks, isolation gowns were quickly being depleted. And though she could use her company to make the quality disposable gown, she decided to make solutions to the issues mentioned by clinicians.
Carolina's gowns sought to tackle the small problems which will add up to big differences in safety: Kezia added thumbhole cuffs so that wrists can stay covered, gave the gowns a better neck, and added a Velcro overlapping back, allowing them to be removed easily and safely.
"The changes seem straightforward and straightforward, but unless you've talked through them with clinicians who are handling this a day you would possibly not recognize that these simple changes can make an enormous impact on their safety."
Kezia said she sees these changes as to how to deliver medical benefits, personal benefits, and environmental benefits.
Tests of CareAline's isolation gowns found they might be washed 100 times, giving them 100 times the longevity of ordinary disposable gowns. during a study done by the National Institute of Health, reusable gowns were shown to supply increased protection and significant cost savings for hospitals.
"The medical industry produces tons of waste because such a lot of it's single-use to be sterile. If there is a way we will find that permits for something to be reused, why wouldn't we roll in the hay that way?"
Despite the exhaustion of undergoing multiple cancer treatments, Kezia says she is powered by testimony from patients saying she's helped their lives feel a touch more normal and a touch safer.
"For me, being in and out of cancer treatment for 10 years, I learned that I had to form my treatment a neighborhood of my life and not design my life around my treatment. once we hear comments that folks were ready to return to high school, attend work or hug their grandkids, those are the stories that basically make me desire we're moving the needle.".
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