Buckeye Nursing Story Slam

These Buckeye Nurses shared stories of finding joy through adversity at a TED Talk-style event in April, Buckeye Nursing Story Slam.

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Tara O’Brien

“Looking out a glass garage door, we can see palm trees bending like rubber bands. We can see the waves of the Gulf of Mexico coming toward us like a tsunami … [then] the garage door blows out into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Tara O’Brien relates how she and her husband survived Hurricane Ian, found the strength to rebuild again and found joy through adversity.

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Nicole McGarity

“As the images loaded, my heart sank. I could see the large brain mass on his CT. I knew in that moment our lives were changing forever.”

Nicole McGarity talks about her father’s battle with cancer and the support she received from her coworkers. “There are few professions that build the same kind of community.”

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Portia Zaire

“Fire has a sound, and it is scary. It is panic-inducing to hear infrastructure crumbling ... everything that I thought I needed to survive was gone.”

Portia Zaire started her PhD program at Ohio State one month after her house burned down. “Life is going to do what life is going to do,” she says. “How are you going to rise to the occasion?”

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Loraine Frank-Lightfoot

“We needed every nurse to go back to the bedside, and that included me.”

Loraine Frank-Lightfoot had just started a new job as market chief nursing officer for five hospitals when the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard. She relates how serving alongside other nurses opened her eyes and helped her reprioritize nurses’ quality of life at work.

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Stephanie Gayhart

“I ate everything I could because I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to eat or taste food normally again. I taught my son how to say, ‘I love you’ in sign language, because I didn’t know if I’d be able to speak.”

Stephanie Gayhart was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that would require radical surgery to save her life.

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Seth Lemons

“One night around Christmas, a man I did not know decided that his BiPap was just too much.”

Faced with the responsibility of comforting a struggling COVID-19 patient, Seth Lemons learned something valuable about himself.