The land adjacent to the Legacy at Highwoods Preserve has been purchased by Dr. Debra Shelby, who plans to build a state-of-the-art dermatology practice and school at the site shown in red.
On a visit to Singapore’s acclaimed National Skin Centre in 2012, where she was invited to lecture the nursing staff and meet with the medical staff, Dr. Debra Shelby, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) and Ph.D., witnessed a state-of-the-art, comprehensive dermatology facility that treats 1,000 patients a day, while also serving as a home for continuing education for doctors, new technologies and research studies.
Making a place like that became one of her dreams, and soon, it may become a reality right here in New Tampa.
Shelby, a Tampa Palms resident, is the CEO and Clinical Director for Florida Specialty Medical Services (FSMS), LLC, located on Amberly Dr. in Tampa Palms, where she currently sees patients.
She will soon begin building a new facility, to be called the National Institute for Dermatology: Dermatology Education, on the corner of Highwoods Preserve Pkwy. and New Tampa Blvd. in West Meadows.
“I wasn’t even aware the property was for sale,’’ said Shelby. “I had been looking around the New Tampa area and didn’t find anything I really liked, and this was right in front of me the whole time. It’s a beautiful piece of property.”
The 7-acre property, most of it conservation and wetlands, with 2.5 acres of usable land, has been dormant for years, following a failed attempt to build a charter school on the site in 2012. Sold for $300,000, it was originally zoned for three 2,500-sq.-ft. offices or medical buildings. Shelby said an architect is currently “reconfiguring” that plan to instead include just one 8,000-sq.-ft. building, “with a nice flow.”
Dermatology Care From Start To Finish
Board-certified in dermatology (DNC) through the Dermatology Nursing Association, Shelby’s plan is to build and staff with qualified doctors a facility modeled after the one she visited in Singapore, offering a variety of services, including things like a pharmacy, a shop with sun protective clothing, laser-care, skin cancer treatments, aesthetics as well as a training center for doctors.
The project is currently in permitting.
“It will be a unique concept,’’ Shelby said. “We’re very excited about it.”
Dr. Debra Shelby has big plans for dermatology care.
Shelby, who has a number of specialties but says she has a love for geriatric dermatology, developed the country’s first Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) Dermatology Residency at USF and became the first resident to ever complete the program in 2008, and has learned from the best doctors while serving as a Perioperative Clinical Specialist at the Moffitt Cancer Center on the USF Tampa campus.
Shelby spent 15 years at a practice, mostly in Hudson, at the Center for Dermatology, before scaling back to part-time while she founded FSMS, LLC, which provides dermatology care and education.
Shelby visits most of her patients at senior-assisted facilities.
“It was always my vision to do this, but being part of a practice, it wasn’t something I could make come to fruition,” she said.
Shelby, who says she will start law school in January to study elder care health policy, said she has received so many requests from patients for a land-based facility to visit, creating one in New Tampa only made sense. To that end, the National Institute for Dermatology will be located right next to the Legacy at Highwoods Preserve assisted living facility.
Florida Specialty Medical Services, LLC, is located at 15243 Amberly Dr. For more information, visit FSMSLLC.com, or call 765-0688.
Massage Franchise Set To Open In New Tampa Center
Massage Green Spa, a national spa chain, is opening a new location in the Publix-anchored New Tampa Center plaza at the site formerly occupied by Dine or Dash and La Cubanita Café.
Live Oak resident Todd Phillips is one of the owners. He says he hopes to have the new spa open by mid-June or early-July.
Massage Green Spa bills itself as an affordable luxury spa offering massage therapy, skin care, nail care and “internal care with the latest technology of our infrared saunas.” Phillips says infrared saunas are “all the rage in California” because they offer all the health benefits of a sauna without the stifling heat and atmosphere of traditional saunas. “A little bit more modern,’’ Phillips said, “with greater effect.”
Anand Vihar is already transitioning in preparation for construction in Meadow Pointe, which will include a 17,000-sq.-ft. clubhouse
When good friends and Tampa Bay-area doctors Krishna Nallamshetty M.D., and Seenu Sanka, M.D., envisioned a place their parents could live their later years in, they imagined a calm and peaceful setting. People in a 55-plus community with shared interests, an active and vibrant community with trails to walk.
Fitness rooms to exercise in, places where they could worship and meditate and partake in the vegetarian lifestyle they have enjoyed their entire lives.
Beginning in June, that’s exactly what the two physicians plan to build in Wesley Chapel’s Meadow Pointe community.
Anand Vihar, which means “Blissful Living” (according to its website), promises to be the premier 55-plus community in Tampa Bay. It will be one of the only 55-plus adult communities in Wesley Chapel.
It will be built on a 50-acre site on Mansfield Blvd., less than 100 yards north of where the road currently dead ends (as we reported about again last issue) and is surrounded by large conservation and ponds.
55-Plus Community Coming Together
Drs. Nallamshetty and Sanka, who searched for the right place for two years before enlisting the help of another friend, Santosh Govindaraju, the CEO of Convergent Capital Partners (CCP), hope to break ground on Anand Vihar this summer.
Eric Isenbergh, the CEO of Oxford Homes, has joined the team as the property’s builder.
“I think it’s a phenomenal area to be in,’’ said Govindaraju, whose company focuses on development and repositioning of commercial real estate. He said CCP has put more than half a billion dollars into redeveloping places like Carrollwood Golf Club (previously Emerald Green Golf & Country Club) and a number of hotels and commercial properties. This is the company’s first foray into Wesley Chapel.
Govindaraju said he was able to secure a great price for the property. The deed, he says, will show the partners paid $25,000 for the land itself, but because the previous owners chose not to pay taxes on it — the recession stalled a previous project on the property — the new owners had to pay off liens on 87 lots, at a cost of $11,000 per lot.
According to Govindaraju, multiple banks owned parts of the parcel, but none had any interest in developing it and allowed it go delinquent.
“It was a very fragmented ownership,’’ he said. “We diligently put it back together.”
The roads, parking areas, utilities and detention ponds were all constructed in 2006, after the previous owners had received approval for 330 townhomes and condos.
Three of the buildings in the southeast portion of the project were constructed, with 24 apartments that currently have residents and eight townhomes that don’t, but any further development came to a halt.
The existing buildings and roads will remain, with a new one planned near Anand Vihar’s soon-to-be-built, 17,000-sq-ft clubhouse. CCP plans to invest $5 million into the 55-plus community, building 280 units and incorporating more green space.
“We are very excited,’’ Govindaraju said. “There’s so many great things happening in this area. We want to contribute to the success at Meadow Pointe by creating more upscale opportunities, and increase the value of them by investing more in these properties.”
Although the project appears to be targeting the existing Indian community in our area, Govindaraju says it’s more about a lifestyle than people of any particular origin.
“We will be targeting more of a healthy living lifestyle,’’ Govindaraju says, noting that the Anand Vihar clubhouse will have an exclusively vegetarian kitchen (non-vegetarian meals will be catered on a weekly basis), a yoga room, a multi-faith prayer and meditation room and a theater room to watch the latest Bollywood (and other) movies.
“We will also have a full-time activities director, and I think that will also set us apart,’’ Govindaraju says.
Anand Vihar already has 30 reservations, he added.
For more information, visit AnandViharTampa.com, or call 534-4127.
(L.-r.) Sam Harris, Lisa Missana, Marla Zick, Shane Mitchell and Maurice Rolle got together at Stonewood Grill & Tavern a week after the quartet of rescuers pulled Marla out of her car as it sank in a retention pond just east of the Gateway Bridge in West Meadows.
Rarely does a day go by that four strangers — Sam Harris, Maurice Rolle, Lisa Missana and Shane Mitchell — don’t think about the harrowing rescue, that one Thursday morning, around 7:45 a.m. on March 31, when they came together at the intersection of New Tampa Blvd. and Meadow Pine Dr. in West Meadows.
Each played a pivotal role. In just a few minutes time, they managed to cobble together the smarts, verve and guts to act selflessly and swiftly, to enter dark waters, to pull someone from a gray Ford Mustang that had sunk to the bottom of a retention pond. On May 4, they will be honored by the Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners.
“I don’t know about your religious beliefs or what you believe in,’’ says Sam, “but there was something happening that day.”
Four Strangers, One Goal: Rescue
Maurice was driving his 7-year-old daughter to school, over the Gateway Bridge just past Freedom High, when the gray Mustang heading in the same direction just in front of him swerved to the left and into a white brick retainer wall.
The driver of the car, Marla Zick, 26, had suffered a seizure and was no longer in control of her vehicle.
“I saw her lose control right at the top of the bridge,’’ Maurice says. “She was swerving, and when she didn’t swerve back to correct herself, I knew she was in trouble.”
The car rolled down the bridge, “scraping and grinding” against the wall the whole way, Maurice said.
“I knew it was going wrong,’’ he added. “I was just screaming, ‘No, no, no, no.’”
Sam, a New Tampa Realtor who lives in Heritage Isles, was driving west on New Tampa Blvd., a road he says he had rarely driven on before. But, that morning, he had to pick up a cake at the Publix in the New Tampa Center for a wedding party at his wife’s office at USAA, and decided to take the back way to the insurance office over the bridge.
There was nothing between his car and the one careening down the bridge towards him in the same lane.
He pulled over. The wall finally turned the Mustang loose, and it turned left. It just missed a cement light post, and a tree, before rolling between two bushes and into the retention pond at the corner of Meadow Pine Dr.
Maurice pulled over, told his daughter not to move, and tossed all of his belongings out of his pocket. Sam did the same.
After dropping his daughter off, Maurice had planned on heading into work at the 30/30 Barber Shop & Salon he owns on Busch Blvd. But, his plans changed.
“Dammit, I gotta get wet, I gotta get freaking wet,’’ he said to himself.
After a few steps into the pond, Sam decided they needed something to pull the car out with. It was 7:55 a.m. He picked up his cell phone, called 911 and ran back to his vehicle for a rope.
Deeper Waters Than Expected
Shane was taking his 7-year-old son to school, and as he drove slowly down Meadow Pine Dr. they noticed the car coming through the bushes and rolling gently into the water, where it appeared to float and drift.
A 32-year-old carpenter, Shane pulled his Nissan over and hopped out. He saw Maurice near the water. While Sam was retrieving a rope from the trunk of his car, Shane had a wincher — a motor-driven or hand-powered drum around which rope or a chain is wrapped and used to move heavy loads — on the front of his.
“I just thought we would pull the car out,’’ Shane said. “I didn’t think anyone would be going underwater.”
Maurice grabbed the hook at the end of the wincher chain and walked into the water. He was roughly 20 yards from the car, but the water was getting deeper with every step. After a few steps it was up to chest, and Maurice couldn’t see the car well enough to have an idea where he would be attaching the hook.
All Hands On Deck
Lisa was just a few minutes behind Shane on Meadow Pine Dr., on her way to drop her 14-year-old son A.J. at Family of Christ School in Tampa Palms, when she saw the car in the pond.
At first, she grabbed her phone and started taking pictures. “Oh gosh,’’ she says she told her son, “that person better get out of that car. Then, I realized Shane and Maurice were yelling at somebody in the car.”
Maurice had returned to shore, and he, Sam and Shane were coming up with another plan. But, there wasn’t time — the car began to sink.
“I could see her face, I was screaming to her that someone was coming,’’ Sam recalls. “All of the sudden, the car went to the bottom of the pond.”
“Never in a million years did I think that pond would have drank that car like that,” Maurice says.
The nose of the Mustang went first, thrusting the back end into the air, where it then slowly disappeared from sight. “Three bubbles came up, and it was gone,’’ Lisa says.
“It was total chaos.’’ Maurice says. “The electricity at the point was crazy. Everybody was just in shock. Lisa was saying something, people were screaming, stuff just went by so quick…I looked over at Shane, and he was going into the water.”
Lisa was not far behind. She ran around the pond on the other side, slipped off her flip flops and in her jeans and a black Chicago Blackhawks shirt, jumped into the pond.
For a brief minute before she jumped in, all she could think about was all the photos her friends had sent her by text over the years of the two alligators that lived in the pond.
Once in the water, Lisa swam to the car and tried to get her bearings. She placed her feet on the roof of the car to determine where she was.
The rest, she says, is kind of a blur. She remembers focusing on the driver’s side of the car. Luckily, Marla had been driving with her window down. “I always drive with my window down,’’ she later told Lisa. “Drives my mom crazy.”
This time, it saved her life.
A Few Frantic But Freeing Moments
Shane and Lisa took a few turns unsuccessfully trying to get Marla’s seat belt unclasped. Four, maybe five times each. Neither can remember exactly.
Had Shane not been getting over a cold, he says he may have been able to save Marla in one trip. He had dived for lobster and been spearfishing, free-diving 20 feet and staying under with no problem. On this day, however, maybe from the combination of his cold and adrenaline, he couldn’t seem to get a deep enough breath.
The water was green and murky, Shane says. And the car was not visible. “Shapes and shadows,’’ he says. “I was just feeling around for door handles and everything.”
Lisa came up from the water and screamed to the onlookers to find a knife or scissors, to cut the seat belt. She doesn’t remember who brought her scissors, she just remembers sticking them in her back pocket.
But before she could make another trip below, Shane emerged from the water and told her he had freed Marla from the seat belt. It was time to go pull her out.
“Let’s do this,’’ Shane said.
Marla was frothing at the mouth, but was still alive. Tampa Police Department (TPD officers helped pull them to shore, and medics tended to Marla before taking her to Florida Hospital Tampa.
Together, they sank back into the water, but when they reached for Marla, she wasn’t there. Unhindered by the seat belt, she had floated to the roof of the car and towards the passenger side. Once they figured out what had happened, “Shane grabbed her by the waist, I grabbed something, and we pulled her out through the window,’’ Lisa says.
Shane and Lisa may not remember how many times they dove under, but they knew why — “I saw somebody dying,’’ Shane says.
In real time, the rescue lasted no more than two minutes, Sam says, maybe even only 90 seconds.
But, “It felt like an eternity,’’ Shane says. “I remember when I stopped to catch my breath, I was just thinking, ‘Oh my God, if I don’t get her out she is going to die. I can’t stop.’ It felt like such a long time, and I dove so many times.”
Maurice was in shock, waiting for Shane and Lisa to emerge with a body. He was ready to jump back in if he was needed, but he worried that his failed attempt to hook the wincher to the car was Marla’s best shot.
“The deal was, I was like, ‘God, please don’t let this girl die,’” Maurice says, “because I couldn’t get to her.’’
When they got her to the surface, Lisa and Shane turned Marla on her back. “She looked dead,’’ he says. “She was purple and blue and pale.”
Marla was frothing at the mouth, but was still alive. Tampa Police Department (TPD officers helped pull them to shore, and medics tended to Marla before taking her to Florida Hospital Tampa.
“We have the best police department in the nation,’’ Sam says, a sentiment shared by the others, thanks to TPD’s quick response.
Lisa and Shane slumped to the ground.
“I remember my thighs hurt so bad,’’ Lisa says.
“Absolutely spent and exhausted,’’ Shane says.
Lisa and Shane had the same thought as they looked out to the pond, to where the car had settled. Was there anybody else in there? Was a child strapped into a seat in the back? Had they done enough?
Lisa waited until the car was pulled out, to see with her own eyes. She was overwhelmed with relief when police told her the Mustang was empty.
Afterwards, Lisa would shower until there was no more hot water, drive up to school and give her son a big hug.
The Reunion…And Some Peace
A week later, the entire group — Marla, Shane, Lisa, Maurice and Sam — met for the first time since the incident, for dinner at Stonewood Grill & Tavern, located a mile or two from the scene of the accident.
It was a therapy session, of sorts. Lisa brought booklets for each person, with all the pictures she could find taken at the pond. Together, they pieced the story back together. The rush of adrenaline and the power of impulse and instinct had left many holes for all four of the rescuers.
“Dinner definitely helped everybody,’’ Sam says.
Marla did not remember anything. She told them that one minute she was driving to get a cup of coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Highwoods Preserve Pkwy., and the next minute, she woke up in a hospital.
For Maurice, dinner was closure. He had been troubled since that morning, and meeting Marla and talking with his fellow good samaritans helped clear his mind and his conscience.
“Thinking that somebody could have possibly died and you didn’t get to them that first go around,’’ he says. “That’s tough.”
The attention he received afterwards had overwhelmed Shane, an otherwise private person. But, in the darkened, comfortable confines of Stonewood, he found some peace reliving the moment. It also helped him piece together the story.
“It’s a lot to come to terms with,’’ Maurice admits.
Lisa, who still gets recognized in public, and even thanked by strangers, learns something new every day about the event. She says she is haunted by what could have been. Re-telling her story, she cries at certain parts.
“There’s a lot of ‘what-ifs,’” she says. “What if we didn’t get her out? What if she died? What if something went terribly wrong and my husband was planning a funeral and my kids didn’t have a mother? There’s just so many things.”
Lisa spent many of her summers growing up in Chicago working as a lifeguard, but never imagined she would use those skills years later. “It’s just all surreal,’’ she says. “This is something that is going to stay with me for a lifetime.”
Maurice, Shane and Lisa still drive by the pond daily, taking their kids to school, going to the grocery store, heading to and from work. In the past, Lisa might look over and see if any alligators were sunning themselves, but otherwise, no one paid it much attention.
Now it’s hard not to look and stare…and remember.
Something special happened that day.
“A spear fisherman, a former lifeguard, a barber and a real estate agent, all coming together, (each) with a role and a purpose,’’ Sam says.
Erin Heilman participated in the New Tampa Relay for Life to raise money for the American Cancer Society (ACS) for the first time in 2007. She says she continued to participate year after year, and in 2012, was shocked to receive a cancer diagnosis herself at age 37.
“Now I’ve seen both sides of this event, as both a participant and a survivor,” she says. This year, Heilman is heading up the event as its co-chair, along with her friend Buffy Atkinson. “With all the mixed emotions the event brings out, it is truly a celebration,” says Heilman.
The New Tampa Relay for Life will be held from Friday, April 8, 6 p.m., until 6 a.m. on Saturday, April 9, around the track at Freedom High in Tampa Palms.
The annual event is always fun for families and event organizers invite everyone to attend. At 9 p.m., luminarias that have been decorated in honor of cancer survivors and in memory of those loved ones lost to cancer will be lit, which is always a beautiful tribute around the track. At 11 p.m., registered attendees under the age of 18 will need to have a wristband showing they have turned in paperwork and are allowed to remain, while registered team members will continue walking the track throughout the night and into the morning.
Heilman encourages people to support the Relay, which raises money for programs that help cancer patients.
“I’ve actually used these programs myself,” she says, explaining one resource that was especially meaningful to her was the 24-hour support line she called when she received her diagnosis and was struggling with how to tell her then-seven-year-old son. Other programs include rides to and from doctor appointments for patients who need them, and funding for the Hope Lodge at the Moffitt Cancer Center, which provides a beautiful home for patients who have to travel long distances for treatments.
The New Tampa relay will be filled with booths that sport the event’s fairy tale theme, “Once Upon A Time,” including Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and many others. Heilman says her favorite theme was chosen by the team at Harold H. Clark Elementary, the movie “Brave,” to reflect that characteristic of cancer patients. There will be food, games, raffles, a giant inflatable, a scavenger hunt, three-legged race, frisbee, Zumba, a talent show and even a dance competition. All money raised that evening goes to the New Tampa Relay.
Last year, the event had 42 teams and raised more than $76,000. This year, there are 30 teams signed up to participate so far – and still time for new teams to join. Event organizers are hoping to raise $82,250.
If you are a cancer survivor, be sure to register at the event website and come out to participate. The event kicks off with a “survivor lap,” where all cancer survivors and their caregivers walk the first lap around the track. Each survivor receives a t-shirt and medal (new this year) and registered caregivers receive a pin. Dinner also is provided for all survivors and caregivers.
“We want survivors there because we are there to celebrate them,” says Erin.
To learn more about the ACS New Tampa Relay, or to sign up a team, make a donation, or register as a survivor, visit RelayForLife.org/NewTampaFL.
Bailey Rhodes (right) and best friend Jessica Korver.
To whoever has been parking their car in Bailey Rhodes’ senior spot this year at Paul R. Wharton High, she’s got news for you:
Starting Monday, April 4, she’ll be needing it back.
Bailey, a 17-year-old senior at Wharton, will be returning to school for the first time since Sept. 2014, after winning battles against bone cancer and leukemia the last four years that left her immune system battered and susceptible and left her unable to wander far from her hospital rooms at Tampa General (TGH) and All Children’s hospitals, as well as her New Tampa home.
She took on all of her treatments with verve, foregoing any wallowing and telling anyone who would listen, ‘Let’s get this going, I have stuff to do and places to go.’”
She will finally get to park her car in one of those spaces in a couple of weeks.
“I can’t wait,’’ she says excitedly, her big brown eyes and even bigger spirit clearly joyful. “I’ve been waiting such a long time.”
Nearly two years, to be exact. September of 2014 was the last time that Bailey attended school, after her first fight with bone cancer and before her second against leukemia.
She has worked hard for this moment. While cancer ravaged her body, Bailey kept her mind focused on school. Although she couldn’t attend full classes, she took her courses through TGH’s Homebound programs, spending hours on the phone with teachers like Gary Lundgren, “Who I couldn’t have done this without,” she says, and others from Wharton.
Bailey has volunteered any way she could, as a mentor, talking to other families touched by cancer, working fashion shows with cancer patients and even working with special needs students when healthy enough.
She took both the SAT and ACT exams from a hospital room.
Now, she will be able to attend the final two months of her senior year, and graduate with her class.
“Everything she had to go through, it’s been kind of hard to watch,’’ says Bailey’s best friend, Jessica Korver. “It’s been hard to go to school and have her not be there. She was always the, ‘Let’s go to all the pep rallies’ person, and I’ve always been the stay home type of person. So, that’s been kind of hard. But she is soooo strong. That’s the one thing I really learned through this whole thing.”
A Tough Time
Bailey was first diagnosed in 2012 with osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer with fewer than 20,000 cases nationwide per year.
The summer before her freshman year at Wharton, she had been experiencing pain in her left knee. Her mother Beth says that Bailey’s grandmother noticed a small rise in her knee, and a visit to the doctor and an MRI confirmed that she had a tumor.
“When I heard tumor, I was like, ‘Wait a minute…back it up,’’’ said Beth, a second-grade teacher at New Tampa’s Dr. Richard F. Pride Elementary.
The diagnosis came just two weeks after Bailey was told she no longer had to wear a back brace to bed to help with scoliosis while she was in middle school.
“I said, ‘I can’t catch a break’ in one breath, and then in the other, I said, ‘I guess this is God’s plan for me,’” Bailey says.
Although there were tears as family members showed up at the doctor’s office, Bailey was resolved to fight. She received six months of chemotherapy treatments, a full knee replacement and limb salvage of her tibia, and another seven months of chemo. Her weight at one point was down to 68 pounds, and she needed a feeding tube to help get her back to a healthier weight.
She was able to return to Wharton for the second nine-week period of her sophomore year in 2013. For a year, she was back to being a normal teenager, making the homecoming court, hanging out with friends, and even taking a family trip to Hawaii.
But, in August of 2014, she started noticing bruises in places where she had not bumped into anything or fallen down. After being in remission for a year, a routine lab test revealed bad news — secondary leukemia, which was the result of her previous chemotherapy, requiring that she receive a bone marrow transplant.
Bailey was shaken up. This fight would be more difficult, and require more resolve. She gritted her teeth through more chemo treatments as doctors searched for a bone marrow match.
“When I was re-diagnosed, I said, ‘This is going to suck, it’s going to be hard, but it’s only going to make you stronger,’’’ Bailey recalls. “We’re going to get through this. And then at the end, we are going to say, ‘What can we do with this now? What can we take from this, and make better?’”
After testing her family at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, doctors ended up finding a perfect match from a donor in Germany.
“A 10 out of 10 match,’’ said Bailey. “I thought that was the coolest thing ever, that somewhere out there, I don’t even know this person, and we’re not related, and they have the exact same bone marrow as me. That’s pretty cool.”
Bailey spent 80 more days in the hospital. Because her immune system was so fragile, she wasn’t allowed to leave her room. Immediate family was allowed in, but only in full hospital gowns and masks.
She was finally discharged Easter weekend of 2015,. For nine more months, she wasn’t allowed to leave her house. “I’ve been on house arrest,’’ she jokes.
She actually had to eat processed foods, like macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles, because there is less bacteria in them than say, unwashed lettuce and fruit. “You could have washed it really good, but I’m wasn’t taking that risk,’’ Beth says.
And, because her bone marrow donor had a peanut allergy, Bailey now also has a peanut allergy, so great discretion had to be used in her daily food choices.
The Big Announcement
On March 15, doctors told her she was once again all clear, and that she could return to school.
“I’m nervous, but I’m really excited,’’ Bailey says, and after noting that the last day of school is May 20, smiles as she reaches across the table to high-five Jessica.
Bailey also has a new cause: Code Gray, an informational service she wants to start for new cancer patients and their families, which she hopes to launch soon.
While at Tampa General Hospital the first time, Bailey had a port put in instead of an IV, and it was difficult to access. Located in her chest and at an angle, it was beneath the skin and reached by a needle. “Very painful,’’ she says. “The first time they tried to access it, it took 10 times.”
She was told to make sure the nurses used 1-inch needles, and one night a nurse was having difficulty accessing the port. Bailey asked her if she was using the right needle, and the nurse insisted she was.
“I only asked because it wasn’t working,’’ Bailey says.
As it turned out, it wasn’t the right needle, just as Bailey thought. On her chart that night, the nurse listed her as “Code Gray,” a designation for “unruly” patients.
The seed for Bailey’s Code Gray organization had been planted. As part of a project for her nursing assistant classes she was taking (since she was not allowed to go to clinicals), she researched mistakes made at hospitals, many she thinks could have been prevented had the patient and their family spoken up. But, most people, said Beth, are just content to let the doctors and nurses handle things.
In Bailey’s case, the family kept extensive journals and recorded every dose of medicine every time something was administered. “Highly recommended,’’ Beth said. “For me, it was therapeutic.”
Bailey spent a recent weekend designing pamphlets, which will contain information for new cancer patients and their families, including tips about dealing with your cancer treatment and talking to doctors and nurses without stepping on toes, as well as how to continue your schoolwork against great odds. She’d also like to create a website, hold some fund raisers and get the word out.
“I’m so passionate about it,’’ she says. “People don’t speak up because they don’t think they are knowledgeable enough to say anything to their doctor. But, if they have questions or doubts, they can — and should — say something.”
Bailey says she hopes Code Gray can help cancer patients. And, maybe one day, she will as well. She has been accepted into her dream school, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and wants to be a pediatrician. While she never thought about treating cancer patients before her own struggles with the disease, she wonders if she hasn’t been sent a sign.
“I always wanted to be a pediatrician, and they always asked me, ‘Do you want to go into oncology?,’’’ Bailey says. “I thought, there’s no way I could relive that every day. But then, this second time, it was like this is proving that I can relive it. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do.”
“It was a very fragmented ownership,’’ he said. “We diligently put it back together.”
The nose of the Mustang went first, thrusting the back end into the air, where it then slowly disappeared from sight. “Three bubbles came up, and it was gone,’’ Lisa says.
