Transplant nurse’s determination makes teenager’s last wish happen

The teenager knew his years-long battle with cancer was nearly done. But there was one last thing the 18-year-old desperately wanted: to go home to Mexico so he could say goodbye to his father and brother.

His care team at the UCHealth Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic on the Anschutz Medical Campus had to tell him he was not strong enough to make the trip.

In that case, he said, he had one other request. He wanted to be baptized.

That we can do, Elsa FitzGerald told him. A permanent charge nurse in the transplant unit, FitzGerald offered to summon the hospital’s chaplain.

No, the young man said. A sprinkling baptism won’t work. His religion requires total immersion.

It seemed an impossible request; an outing to a church was out of the question. He was too weak.

Even so, FitzGerald began researching options.

“I just kind of got determined that I wasn’t going to deny him this,” she said.

The young man had been a patient for nearly six months, and transplant unit providers had grown fond of him and his mother. His mother brought him here from Mexico after doctors there exhausted treatment options.

To grant his wish, FitzGerald racked her brain and even put a colleague’s husband on stand-by, ready to run out and buy an inflatable kiddie pool. Then she called the labor and delivery unit. Yes, we have birthing tubs, charge nurse Jessica Vold told her, including one that was set to be used one last time before infection protocols dictated that it be discarded. It would be perfect. FitzGerald said she isn’t a terribly spiritual person. But that convinced her that the baptism “was meant to be.”

The family had suggested the next day, Memorial Day, for the event, but FitzGerald’s experience suggested sooner would be better. A flurry of calls brought members of the teenager’s Denver church, and its pastor, who came in on what was supposed to be his night off after Sunday services.

It took nearly two hours to fill the tub, FitzGerald said. Then “the entire floor” joined the teenager’s mother and church members as she and nurses, Kileen Albright and Jessica Fohn, and certified nursing assistant, Amanda Sandoval, helped the patient to the tub, an excursion that “took a lot out of him.” Lying in the tub, in gym shorts and T-shirt, his pastor standing beside him, the frail young man got his wish. He was baptized.

At 2 p.m. the next day, he “very peacefully took his last breath,” FitzGerald said.

Losing a patient, especially one so young, is heart-wrenching, she said. Colleagues in the transplant unit comfort each other, FitzGerald said.

“We have a really great team. We get each other through it,” she said.

For many on the unit, the 18-year-old was special. His life was too short, but within his family, and beyond, FitzGerald said, “he was well-loved by many people, at home and here.”