Detention nurse faces her own serious illness
For Pulse
Sunday, October 19, 2008
During the past 11 years, nurse Tammy Bayshore has quietly tended to thousands of inmates at the Gwinnett County Detention Center in Lawrenceville.
The bespectacled 41-year-old is a familiar face in the jail, exchanging pleasantries with deputies while ambling down the long corridors on her rounds. She doesn’t look like a woman who is struggling for survival, but she is.
File photo
Tammy Bayshore, a nurse at the Gwinnett County Detention Center, needs a kidney and pancreas transplant. ‘I knew it was coming; it wasn’t a shock to me,’ she said.
Bayshore has been an insulin-dependent diabetic since age 13.
When her blood sugar plummets, Bayshore lapses into an unresponsive state. Bayshore was driving her car one day last year when she suffered one of her worst episodes. She struck another vehicle and ran off the road.
No one was injured, but diabetes took its toll on Bayshore’s body in other ways. Her kidneys are failing.
Doctors told Bayshore late last year that it was time for a kidney and pancreas transplant. “I knew it was coming; it wasn’t a shock to me,” Bayshore said. “I have kind of prepared myself.”
Yet far from being fearful of the surgery, Bayshore said she looks forward to having renewed energy.
She likely will spend six to nine months on a waiting list. After the transplant, she’ll take expensive medication to help prevent rejection of the new organs.
Bayshore says extended bouts with illness have molded her into a more compassionate caregiver, even though her job entails getting up close and personal with criminals.
“Some of them are manipulative and things like that, but all in all I understand how they feel,” she said. “I don’t look at them as inmates. I look at them as patients.”
The director of nurses at the jail, Cheryl Scott, said Bayshore is the kind of employee she wants to keep — warm, versatile, a team player.
“Somebody who doesn’t know Tammy would never know she has so serious an illness,” Scott said.
Co-workers and deputies organized a motorcycle ride fund-raiser in September that was expected to bring in about $5,000 for Bayshore’s medical expenses.
“Everybody wanted to help Tammy,” said Lt. Col. Don Pinkard, the jail commander. “We need to rally around the people we care about.”
The Georgia Transplant Foundation is matching all donations up to $10,000. For more information or to make a contribution, contact Holly Vanager-Crummell at 1-866-428-9411.
— This article is a reprint from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.