Get to know nurse Lynda Stallwood, and hear about her nursing career and her important work with patients living with diabetes.

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Jamie Davis:         Lynda, let’s start off with asking you how you decided to become a nurse. What encouraged you that nursing was a career you wanted to follow?

Lynda Stallwood:     As a very young girl, my sister and I always knew in our hearts, as very young children, nursing was what we wanted to do. We grew up wearing nursing uniforms. I’m not exactly sure why I knew that. I’m not even sure I knew what a nurse was at the time. But it was in my heart to always provide care. We took care of sick animals, dead flies, all kinds of things. It was just that caring gene perhaps that my family has.

I am one of many nurses in my family. So it was just only something that was deep within my heart. I didn’t have the opportunity to go to nursing school until after my children were born. But once I did, I went into it full-fledged. I knew it was just what I needed to be. I think even as my children were born and growing,

I saw that there tended to be a gap sometimes between the medical profession and taking care of your child at home. And I felt like if I could help bridge that gap as a nurse with educating my patients, empowering them to answer my questions, of your healthcare provider, that that’ll be very gratifying. Perhaps as important in their care is providing the correct medication is also providing them the tools that they need to navigate the healthcare system.

Jamie:                   I agree completely. There’s so much about our current healthcare system that requires even more skills and navigating it. So it’s really important. I agree that nurses need to be the pilots for our patients to navigate that system.

Lynda:                   Yes, absolutely.

Jamie:                   So tell me a little bit about how you decided or what drove you into becoming a diabetes care specialist. There’s a lot of things that nurses go through and we come in contact with a lot of different specialties but something in diabetes care keep your interest.

Lynda:                   It is. It was a particular young woman, I was working at a general peds unit at the time. This was over 25 years ago. She came in – she was about 10 years of age – she and her parents came in with a diagnosis of “rule out diabetes.” And they were very calm. They were very attentive. They presented themselves as very confident. That no matter what they will be able to handle the diagnosis which is wonderful. As the care progress and lab tests revealed it was in fact this young woman had Type 1 diabetes.

So we started all the education. She was learning how to draw for insulin, test her blood sugar. She was going on a diet and exercise and lifestyle changes and all of those things that are part of diabetes care and management. Her parents were very active, very supportive. Everybody was just – “We can handle this, everything is fine.” And so I was taking [the cues 0:05:01.5] and trying to just continue to support them but listening very carefully to what they were saying and how they were saying it.

I was working the afternoon shift at the time and before I left for the evening, I wanted to check in on this young woman to make sure she was resting comfortably. I could hear her crying very softly but she was crying. So I just went in and asked her what I could do to help. And she started to open up about how frightened she was and how she didn’t like it and how this was going to affect her the ...