TCMC Stroke Coordinator Carol Reeling followed her family’s footsteps to become a nurse and save lives.
Carol Reeling, RN, knew since she was young she wanted to be a nurse. An intrinsic feeling when everyone in your family is a nurse or an engineer.
“I have a sister who is high-risk OB [obstetrics], I have two older sisters who are nurses and I have an aunt that’s a nurse,” Carol said.
“In 1998 as a traveling nurse I went traveling with one of the girls I went to nursing school with and we started off in Florida and went all over the place and I came out here and that’s when I met my husband and I’ve been here ever since,” she said smiling.
Carol wasn’t done exploring, she dove into different departments in the nursing field at Tri-City Medical Center. “I came out here working on Telemetry, then I went into the float pool, where you go everywhere in the hospital and then I went to the stroke unit and about 10 years ago I became the stroke coordinator.”
That position showed her first hand how important healthcare workers are. “It is very important, a very rewarding job. We’ve had some great great cases at the beginning of this year where these people are coming in and they would be in a nursing home for life, our team activates everything quickly and they’ve walked out of here. It is amazing to see.”
Carol said leading-edge brain clot busting drugs and technology in the palm of your hand at TCMC are what make the difference. “We do a perfusion study and the green is showing us salvageable brain tissue so we know if we go in and pull out the clot we can save that part of the brain.”
Those procedures saving lives in the process. “To better somebody’s life and to see the families completely distraught and then to see them happy as can be and so thankful for the treatment,” Carol said.
A rewarding job for Carol, her family and our community.
Happy Nurses and Hospital Week!
