Lives Changed by a Drug-Resistant Infection: Mary and Mo's Story

It all just came back to me, all of everything that my mother had gone through. And once I started learning about how these things probably could have been prevented, then it changed my arc as an infection preventionist that I could help people relate to what they needed to do by talking about my mom and sharing my mom's story. I'm Moe Lansing. I'm an infection preventionist and a nurse, and this is my sister. I'm Mary Miller. I'm also an infection preventionist and a nurse. And we lost our mom to a drug-resistant germ on Mother's Day. And we went on afterwards to become infection preventionists. Infection preventionists, their whole goal is to keep the patients safe, and we can be involved in any department of a hospital. My mother grew up in Boston, so she had that Boston accent. And she was an only child, my father was an only child, so they had nine kids. So I'm the oldest daughter and the oldest. She's the youngest daughter. My father decided to open a flower store, so then my mother had nine kids, plus had to work at the flower store every day. What I remember most about my mom was that she loved her family. She loved all of us individually and as a group. My mother was a dialysis patient. What happened was she developed a drug-resistant infection, bloodstream infection. Her quality of life completely changed. She wasn't independent anymore, and that, I think, was very frustrating for her as well. It's very hard for me to see her in that condition because she was such a lively person otherwise. She became septic. She just got sicker and sicker. She went back to the hospital for the last time, and that's where she died. Of all weird things to happen, my mother dies on Mother's Day. She had nine kids, and it was just really, really, you know, kind of heart, even more heartbreaking than it would have been, but that's how it ended. And it was all related to this initial infection with the drug-resistant germ. I share my mother's story, and I have been sharing it since I became an infection preventionist. I think it helps team members, physicians, anyone that I'm talking to, understand that the person that's in the bed belongs to someone, and that every touch matters. And I think it also helps them understand that it could be their loved one, and what would they want for them? Both Mary and I have been on all sides of the bed between being nurses, being infection preventionists, being family members, and then also being patients ourselves in the past, that we have a unique approach to what we can give to patients, team members, nurses, physicians, anyone in the healthcare system, to be a voice for them and to help them speak up. Prevent infections whenever you can. Practice hand hygiene whenever you can. You have a wound on your arm, keep it covered. Use common sense for food preparation, and also use antibiotics wisely. Our mom taps us on the shoulder every once in a while to say, you know, thank you, because we're hopefully, you know, changing more lives than just our own. It's like that story of the starfish, where somebody comes upon a beach and a little child is throwing starfish back into the water, and the adult says, well, you can't save all of them. And the child reaches down, picks up a starfish, and throws it into the water and says, I made a difference for that one. And I think that that's what we do. We make a difference, whether it's for the patients, the community, or for the healthcare teams that we work with.