In an Instant: AANN
Written by Janice L Hinkle, PhD, RN, CNRN, a senior research fellow at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK, funded by the Medical Research Council. Janice is from St. Augustine, FL.
On March 29, 2008 Lee Woodruff gave the Agnes M. Marshall keynote address entitled ‘In an instant: Lee and Bob Woodruff's journey of recovery and healing' to open the 40th annual educational meeting of the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses. It was a great fit with the theme of the conference: Celebrate the Journey! Building on excellence with vision and venture.
Lee began by telling us she had good and bad news. The bad news was that her husband, Bob, who was supposed to co-present with her could not make it. She told us she knew that, as nurses, we would understand that as a result of his injuries suffered when he was hit with an improvised explosive device in Iraq and suffered a traumatic brain injury he needed some urgent dental work. She reassured us that the good news was that she was the better speaker of the two. I believe she was right, we all sat spellbound and, at times teary eyed, as she told us over the next hour the intense story of Bob's injury and the entire family's journey to heal and recover from the explosion that changed all their lives in an instant.
I am a veteran conference attendee, sometimes going to as many as 10 conferences all over the world in any given year. So I am usually quite ho hum, to say the least, about these big name keynote speakers, especially celebrities. This keynote was different though. First of all I was keenly interested as Bob had suffered a traumatic brain injury and as a neuroscience nurse I am well aware of the challenges of caring for these patients. Secondly Lee won me over totally with her comments about nursing and her insight about the pivotal roles the nurses played in Bob's care and ultimate recovery. I was so inspired that I promptly bought not one but two copies of their book: In an instant: A family's journey of love and healing (2008).