Photo By Jennifer Scales | Beverly Buchanan, a nurse educator at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical...... read more read more
Some women don’t listen to their bodies when it’s trying to tell them something is wrong.
Fortunately, Beverly Buchanan, a specialty nurse in the Medical Intensive Care Unit/Coronary Care Unit/Step Down Unit (MICU/CCU/SDU) at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn VA Medical Center in Columbia, S.C., did listen when she awoke from a deep, sound sleep to the sensation of “someone having just kicked” her in the chest one spring night in May 2012.
Of course, initially, Buchanan did not think anything could be seriously wrong, because she had a normal EKG in 2010.
But with a history of heart disease lurking in her family, she didn’t want to take the chance of the genetics of her father, Theodore Gibbs, Sr., who had died when he was 58, after having suffering three myocardial infarctions, occurring with her.
Also, Buchanan’s son, Timothy, who is now a junior at Spring Valley High School, was born with a congenital heart defect known as tetralogy of Fallot, which had him on the operating table at only five and one-half months.
And if it wasn’t for a planned trip to Europe to visit her daughter Whitney that summer, she might have ignored the ‘kick’ and continued doing things which were considered normal and necessary for her, from taking care of patients, handling family matters, working two jobs, and the like.
The medical results? The ‘widow maker’, a name given for blockage of the left main coronary artery, preventing blood flow to large areas of the heart which causes a massive heart attack and leads to sudden death, was the culprit.
Buchannan had a 99 percent occlusion (blockage).
“The degree of the blockage was obviously dangerous,” Buchanan began. “Doctors could not put in a stint due to where the blockage was located. So, they had to do a procedure allowing for a vessel bypass.”
With three months of cardiac rehabilitation, the physicians and staff who performed her life-saving procedure, friends who were supportive in every manner possible, and her family, Buchanan was able to make that trip to Europe to see her daughter that summer and even return back to work full-time.
Buchanan’s childhood begins with memories of growing up in the now historic Spanish Harlem district in New York, where her home was adjacent to Central Park. After attending Brooklyn Technical High School, what would now be classified as a magnate school, the family relocated to South Carolina.
Buchanan received her Bachelor of Arts in administration and Master’s degree in education from South Carolina State College in Orangeburg.
To Buchanan, college career options would either lead her working for the Internal Revenue Service or the military. Thanks to an Army commercial which showed a Soldier easily jumping from an airplane and saying something like, “We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day”, the recruitment message drew Buchanan into the Army while in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program at SC State.
“It’s like when someone tells me I cannot do something, that’s when I go into overdrive to do the opposite, like jumping out of airplanes when I joined the Army. I gave my service as a personnel officer for 11 years. I never thought about being a nurse during that time”, Buchanan said.
But voices from the past seemed to echo around Buchanan for another career direction. They included a Lamaze coach whom she met, while helping a friend during their pregnancy, who commented on how well she was able to help the friend; Buchanan’s mother, Estelle Gibbs, telling her after high school graduation that she would make a good nurse; and then her siblings Theodore JR, Patricia, Kathleen, and Aretha, who all wanted to pool their money together to send her to medical school.
Using her GI Bill after leaving the Army, Buchanan attended the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston on a fellowship where she received her Bachelor’s of Science in nursing. With nursing degree in hand, Buchanan worked as a medical-surgical nurse at Providence Hospital and devoted 21 years in the medical intensive care unit at Palmetto Health (formerly Richland Memorial Hospital), both in Columbia. Buchanan still works at Palmetto Health to this date in a PRN status.
In 2003, Dorn welcomed Buchanan into the VA system, where she began as a part-time employee. Working full-time, she is involved in staff development for the section she works in. “Not everyone comes to these units with the necessary skills, so they have to learn the requirements for the unit. On these units, they must learn how to take care of in-patients who are diagnosed as being critically ill,” Buchanan said. “They may have to learn about invasive monitoring which is not done on the regular floors.”
Buchanan is also involved in patient education. “That education is a team concept working with pharmacy, social work, nutrition, and any other section that brings it all together for the patient,” Buchanan adds.
In addition to her family, there have been influencers whom Buchanan gives credit.
“My sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Head, pushed me along the way, reminding me that I can be and do whatever I wanted to life,” Buchanan began. “My VA co-workers, Yvette Twum-Danso, who recommended me for the AHA recognition; Wendy Robinson, my friend who graduated with me from nursing school; Nadine Al-Assad, a pre-bed nurse; and Linda Wilkerson, an RN in recovery and surgery, continue to stand with me.”
Buchanan also gives credit to Dr. Rodney Rhinehart, a physician at Providence Heart in Columbia, who remains her cardiologist to this day. Sharon Vereen, a good friend at Palmetto Health whom she had to teach how to text and send out updates when hospitalized in 2012, remains steadfast also in her support system.
In her spare time, Buchanan likes to curl up with a good mystery book (can anyone say James Patterson…according to her) and some cross stitching.
“I did not fit the profile…I did not have a heart attack,” Buchanan said. “For women, heart disease is not as clear cut as it is in men. Knowing those numbers is important. The numbers I refer to are your cholesterols, BMI (body mass index), blood glucose, and blood pressure. Remember that blood pressure is a cardiovascular disease.”
Buchanan is one of 11 women honored nationally by the American Heart Association for their 2017 Go Red For Women campaign and will serve as a spokesperson for the movement. The Go Red For Women for the American Heart Association represents a sisterhood of survivors who participate to raise awareness of issues connecting women, heart disease, and stroke.
| Date Taken: | 10.14.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 10.14.2017 15:09 |
| Story ID: | 251713 |
| Location: | COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 149 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Dorn nurse selected as national spokesperson for 2017-2018 American Heart Association campaign, by Jennifer Scales, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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