Saint Joseph's Hospital nurse Daisy Brazzeal, RN, BS, keeps the OR running smoothly. Brazzeal has been working at Saint Joseph's for 50 years and has been a nurse for 54 years.
Daisy Brazzeal, coordinator of surgery at St. Joseph's Health System, likes to encourage patients who are about to have hip replacements. " 'I had my operation three years ago, and look at me now,' I tell them. It makes them smile," Brazzeal said.
As well it should. At 75, Brazzeal is still working full time, traveling and doing the things that are important to her — like inspiring others.
"I've always liked helping people and knew I wanted to be a nurse as a young girl," she said. "I think everybody's got a spiritual gift, and mine is service."
In December, she marked her golden anniversary with St. Joseph's. Brazzeal, RN, BA, graduated from St. Joseph's nursing school in 1952 but started her nursing career in a doctor's office in Atlanta.
"The sisters kept asking me to work in the operating room, but I'd tell them it was too hot," Brazzeal said. "As soon as they built the new building and got air conditioning, I came back home, and I've never left.
"I enjoyed working with the nuns. There was a different atmosphere here because of the religious values; it made you feel like you were in good hands."
Brazzeal also liked the pace and excitement of working in the operating room. "You had to be able to handle the stress and the pressure of never knowing what would happen, but I felt very comfortable there. Some people are just cut out for certain areas, and surgery was mine," she said.
She can remember when nurses threaded needles for sutures and sterilized and folded up instruments in packages between operations. Now many things come prepackaged, which is easier, she said.
Brazzeal has witnessed a revolution in surgical technology over the years.
"Cataract-surgery patients used to have to lie in a darkened room for five days with sandbags on either side of their head so they wouldn't move. We had to feed them," Brazzeal said. "Now they walk in and practically walk right out again."
Patients usually go home from total hip replacements — major surgery that wasn't invented until the 1960s — the next day. And instead of cutting through layers of muscle to remove organs, such as gall bladders, most operations are done laparoscopically.
"I never would have suspected that we'd be using robots for heart and prostate surgery. It would have sounded like something from outer space to me," she said.
Thanks to medical advances, patients don't stay in recovery as long as they used to, which makes the surgery center a busier place. She's seen the OR expand from seven to 18 surgical suites.
A widow, Brazzeal says that nursing, church activities and family keep her on the go. Three times a year, she makes major trips with two friends from Crabapple First Baptist Church.
"We've been traveling together long enough to know each other's bad and good habits," she said. "We've been to Alaska, Canada, the Grand Canyon and Napa Valley . . . just did a cruise to Cancun and plan to visit New England in the fall. I've never been there."
With her two children, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren all living in town, her home is often the spot for family gatherings.
Brazzeal is looking forward to the hospital's employee recognition dinner in May. For her 40th anniversary dinner, she was picked up by a limousine.
She has no plans to retire in the near future.
"Working keeps you mentally stimulated, and I still feel like I'm meeting a need and using my gift," she said. "The Lord has been good to me."