The call to help others

While working in the Petaluma Valley Hospital emergency department one day, Wendi Thomas had to break the news to a woman that her husband suddenly had died.

By DAN JOHNSON

ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

While working in the Petaluma Valley Hospital emergency department one day, Wendi Thomas had to break the news to a woman that her husband suddenly had died.

Thomas was scheduled to attend several meetings and perform other responsibilities in her role as nurse manager of the ED, but instead she spent the next four hours praying and crying with the woman, as well as feeding her and calling her family members.

“I stopped my day to be with her, but I knew it was the right thing to do,” she said.

Thomas later came across the man’s obituary, written by the woman, in a newspaper. The last line read, “To Nurse Wendi, my angel who was there for me on the worst day of my life.”

Providing heartfelt assistance in times of crises make the job particularly gratifying for Thomas, and enable her to fulfill a passion for helping others that developed when she was a girl.

“I’ve always been interested in everyone’s well being,” she said, adding that her father, Bill Wilhelm, and her aunt, Joan Ranghisci, inspired her to do so.

“When their father was dying of cirrhosis of the liver, I saw how genuinely concerned they were about him as they cared for him during his journey from life to death. Their caring intrigued me, and I developed the same caring. And I now see it in my daughter, Paige,” Thomas said.

As a 14-year-old attending Terra Linda High School, Thomas began taking care of seniors at the Nazareth House, a retirement and convalescent home in Terra Linda. She subsequently was hired to work there, and then served as a nursing assistant at Fifth Avenue Convalescent Hospital in San Rafael.

She later worked as a nurse’s aide at Marin General Hospital in Greenbrae, and her experiences there inspired her to enroll in the nursing program at the College of Marin, where she received an associate degree in nursing in 1994. Thomas and her family relocated to Petaluma in 1997, and she was hired as a per diem nurse at PVH in 2000.

Six months later, she was hired as the assistant nursing manager, and after another six months, she was promoted to her current role. She also serves as the hospital’s disaster preparedness coordinator.

Thomas’ work keeps her busy around the clock, but she still manages to serve as a working nurse.

“I have a 24/7 management job, so I’m not pre-scheduled into daily clinical nursing, but I want to have interaction with patients every day. I feel strongly that I need to be directly aware of patients’ needs and nurses’ responsibilities,” she said.

Occasionally, she is asked to stretch way beyond her normal duties.

“One day, a young father had a cardiac arrest, and had to be transported to the cardiac catheterization lab at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Father (Gary) Lombardi of St. Vincent de Paul Church came over and did a blessing. A while later, his family indicated that it wasn’t sure the man had been baptized, but Father Lombardi wasn’t available to baptize him,” Thomas said.

‘“So, you do it,’ he told me. I did, and a while later, the man walked out of the hospital,” she said, smiling.

(Contact Dan Johnson at dan.johnson@arguscourier. com)