Look For The Helpers

Most people don’t like hospitals. While countless lives are saved and improved by the medical care provided at such facilities, many of us continue to  associate them with illness and death.

Yet, while hospital doctors, nurses and staffers deserve respect and thanks, there’s another crew of helpers who need acknowledgment, too. They bring cheer to hospital wards and administer their own type of healing to patients – without a lick of medicine. Their tools are music, laughter, art, animal affection and endless compassion.

In South Florida, we have a host of such saints. Read on to meet four of them.

Music As Medicine

Bree Gordon

Greenacres resident Bree Gordon discovered her talent for music therapy at age 3, when her mother, a nursing assistant, began taking her to work so she could sing for patients. 

Gordon went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in music therapy with a concentration in voice from Nazareth College in Rochester, New York, and then interned for Hospice of Palm Beach County (now Trustbridge). In 2012, she joined Creative Arts Therapies of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, where she is a music therapist, a managing partner and the director of creative arts therapies.

Voice is Gordon’s main musical love, but she knows her way around a guitar, drums and keyboards, too. She visits and performs for patients at area hospitals and medical facilities, including Lynn Cancer Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital. 

A typical day for Gordon, 33, might involve working with Alzheimer’s patients because “music is the only stimulus that lights up the entire brain,” she says. They might recall a favorite lullaby or a song they danced to at their wedding.

“Music brings them back to life,” she says.

She brings music into chemotherapy suites to help patients handle long hours of infusions and aids survivors of trauma in giving voice to their pain through composition and song, as she has done with survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.

“You have to care deeply,” she says. “It’s a wonderful thing to make a living doing what you’re passionate about. It’s a huge gift.”

Gordon now has more than 100 clients from Miami to Orlando and is enamored of her profession. 

“I am the luckiest person in the world,” she says. “I feel so blessed to say that I am excited to go to work every day. Not only do I love my clients, but I really appreciate the opportunity to grow music therapy in South Florida.”

Clowning Around

Linda Herbert

Garbed in a riot of colors, Lotsy Dotsy rides a miniature red bike with a bubble wand firmly in hand and a grin on her face – which is, of course, covered in face paint. 

Lotsy is the alter ego of Linda Herbert, who has been a professional clown at the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood for 27 years. Herbert, 70, was a respiratory therapist at the hospital in 1986 when she saw a need for laughter and began volunteering as a clown, cheering up ailing children who sometimes are desperately – and, all too often, terminally – ill. Eventually, in 1992, she became a full-time clown.

Herbert “works” 10-hour days but insists it’s really play and considers herself a “clown on call” at all times, ready to visit with a sick child, hold the hand of a patient headed into surgery or be the first face they see when they wake. She attends funerals of her patients, who “are in heaven now,” she says, and comforts grieving family members.

“These kids will kick your butt,” she says, recalling when a mother said her own hair was a mess and her 5-year-old daughter, bald due to chemo, quipped, “At least she has hair!” 

“These kids inspire me,” says Herbert, a Pembroke Pines resident. “I play with kids who fight to live, every day.”

For kids with breathing problems who need to exercise their lungs, she passes out harmonicas. For those with fear or anxiety, she blows bubbles and doles out bear hugs.

“We do believe in play here,” she says. “It’s distraction, even if only for a little while.” 

And does the 70-year-old clown plan on hanging up her floppy shoes anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath. 

“When I get tired and feel like I can’t do this anymore, I realize that, when you serve, you find yourself,” she says.

Canine Caregiver

Shannon Bajwa & Nutmeg

They say a dog is man’s best friend. Turns out, a dog might be a patient’s best friend, too.

Nutmeg has been a professional therapy dog at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital for more than eight years, and, anytime she shows up, people start smiling.

Like the other therapy dogs at the hospital, she is a golden retriever from Educated Canines Assisting With Disabilities, trained since birth as a therapy dog. The 10-year-old pup, who knows 80 commands, works from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. five days a week, says Shannon Bajwa, her work handler for seven years and the hospital’s child life manager.

“Her day starts off in the surgical area,” she says. “She visits all the kids before they have surgery. They pet her and play with her, and sometimes she gets up on the bed with the kid to comfort them if they are really upset or anxious.” 

Recently, a teenage girl was panicking over receiving an IV, and petting Nutmeg calmed her down, enabling medical personnel to get her IV started. When kids need to exercise by walking after open-heart surgery or appendectomies and don’t want to, Nutmeg helps motivate them. Bajwa, 36, hands them the dog’s leash and lets them walk her.

The hospital hosted Nutmeg’s 10th birthday party recently, attended by her brother Pumpkin and other therapy dogs from the hospital as well as a happy bunch of staffers and patients.

Bajwa, a Plantation resident, explains that hospital dog handlers, all full-time hospital employees, undergo 40 hours of training. Plus, the dogs must recertify every year.

Nutmeg lives with a home handler as a family dog and is brought to the hospital every morning, wagging her tail and loving the attention. She also visits with patients’ families and stressed-out staff members, who are uplifted after a good petting session.

“The kids love her,” Bajwa says. “As soon as they see her, their eyes light up. They are smiling and ready to jump out of bed. She’s a terrific therapist.”

The Art Of Healing

Sonia Thomas

You might think of art as a hobby. But, for Sonia Thomas, it’s an important tool to enrich the lives of her art therapy clients. 

At Lynn Cancer Institute, she has patients draw pictures of their journey through their disease. At Miami Jewish Health, she helps Alzheimer’s patients recall memories through colors. At ViaMar Health in West Palm Beach, Thomas helps patients with eating disorders depict and understand how they feel about their condition through art.

The overall goal is to engage patients in conversation about their conditions, lessening the power of their problems and learning to deal with them better.

“I create a safe space for people to talk about how they feel,” says the Plantation resident. “Clients often don’t want to talk with family members because they start crying and emotions become involved. But, when we talk about their art, all of a sudden, they have a new language and permission to share. They begin talking about themselves.”

Thomas – who has a master’s degree in art therapy and mental health counseling and is a board-certified art therapist and grief counselor – moved from Michigan to Florida in 2007. In 2012, she became owner and operator of Brush Strokes Art Therapy in Pompano Beach, which services Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. By combining her two loves – art and psychology – she “[takes] counseling off the couch and [puts] it into the studio,” she says.

In grief counseling, for example, she might have a client whose grandmother died choose a color to represent their feelings – perhaps red, for Grandma’s favorite lipstick, or black, for their anger at losing her. The colors lead to discussion and provide a path for healing.

“Art therapy is something I was meant to do,” says Thomas, 43. “You have to love what you do because you are working with people who are not in their best moments. You’ve got to be that positive energy for them that you hope will be contagious.” O

Photos by Michael Price