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A Touch of Comfort

Patients recovering from bone marrow transplants at BIDMC now feel more at home during long stays in isolation, thanks to donations of video/DVD players, laptop computers, boomboxes and other gifts from A Touch of Comfort. The charitable organization provides cancer patients and their loved ones with amenities they might otherwise not have during treatment.

James PiteA Touch of Comfort was started by BIDMC patient James Pite (right), who battled Hodgkin’s disease and then leukemia for six and a half years. Pite endured many hours in isolation following two bone marrow transplants, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. Shortly before his death in November 1999, he decided to find a way to make isolation more bearable for other bone marrow transplant recipients — and A Touch of Comfort was born.

“Patients fill out a wish list of two items they would like, such as prepaid phone cards or parking vouchers for family members, and our volunteers add two other items in a bag – for example, CD’s, books or comfy pajamas,” explains Claudia Liberatore, vice president of A Touch of Comfort. “At Christmastime, we bring in lots of gifts based on patients’ ages, such as large handheld Gameboys, answering machines… things to make their time in the hospital go by a little faster.”

The organization has held several events to fund donations to BIDMC’s bone marrow transplant unit. Last year, A Touch of Comfort presented BIDMC with four laptop computers, financed by the organization’s general fund. Patients can use them to access the internet and stay in touch with loved ones through e-mail. “Having a computer makes a big difference in the lives of our patients, who are often unable to leave the room for a month at a time. The computer helps to keep them connected to the outside world,” says David McDermott, M.D., bone marrow transplant, who treated James Pite and was impressed by Pite’s ability to think of others at a time when he was so sick. “A Touch of Comfort helps us support our patients during a very difficult time. They have done so much for our patients.”

Recently a Touch of Comfort donated three video/DVD players to the unit through Rachel’s Tikkun Olam (Healing the World) Fund, named for former patient Rachel Mara Simon. Patients can play videos and DVD’s from the unit’s library, or bring their own favorites, allowing them to get away from the stress of recovery for a while. Staff have observed patients’ wonderful response to A Touch of Comfort’s generosity. As transplant nurse Christine Garabedian, R.N., notes, “The best thing is that patients in transplant, who are in isolation rooms for three to five weeks, know that someone out there is thinking of and supporting them.”

A Touch of Comfort will hold a fundraiser at Hampshire House on Oct. 18 to benefit BIDMC’s bone marrow transplant unit. Tickets: (617)267-6724 or www.atouchofcomfort.org


Published monthly for the people of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to build community, communicate direction, foster pride and recognize accomplishments.

Produced by Beth Israel Deaconess communications, (66)7-7300

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Saving Lives Behind the Scenes
Marilyn Bernstein, Ginny Thomes, Anita Homer
(L-r) Marilyn Bernstein, M.T.(ASCP) medical technologist, chemistry; Ginny Thomes, medical technologist, hematology; and Anita Homer, B.S.C., M.S.C., medical technologist, microbiology.

The call came at night: A patient had developed severe bleeding following childbirth. Throughout the evening hours, a laboratory technologist in BIDMC’s blood bank worked to provide the patient with the blood products she needed to survive.

The next day, as the patient underwent surgery, lab technologists in BIDMC’s east and west campus blood banks coordinated with each other, the patient’s surgeons and anesthesiologists to meet her blood product needs. “Within 24 hours, the woman used 248 units of platelets, plasma and red blood cells,” recalls medical technologist Monique Mohammed, M.S. (ASCP), SBB. “Since the average person has six to eight units of blood, this means she changed over her total blood volume 24 times within 24 hours.”

During the next two weeks, the patient required an additional 140 units of blood. Lab technologists worked diligently to help her while filling requests for BIDMC’s many other patients needing blood. Because some blood components last only a few hours once thawed, technologists had to estimate when the patient would need blood to avoid wasting blood products by thawing them too soon. The patient also had an infection that required close monitoring by microbiology technologists to ensure that she did not develop resistance to antibiotics.

Ultimately, the technologists’ teamwork paid off: The patient fully recovered and went home with her newborn baby.

“It’s so nice to know that there was a happy ending,” Mohammed says. “Often lab techs don’t hear about patients’ outcomes, because we work behind the scenes.”

Saving lives is nothing new to the more than 300 lab technologists in BIDMC’s department of pathology. They work 24/7, every day, performing 4.5 million lab tests annually for the BIDMC community. The team includes:

Phlebotomists, who draw patients’ blood

Lab support assistants, who computerize laboratory test orders and prepare specimens for analysis

Medical technologists, who provide screening and diagnostic testing of blood, urine and other body fluids. They must have four-year college degrees and complete internships; many have advanced degrees.

Medical laboratory technicians, who process specimens and do less complex testing

Cytotechnologists, who examine Pap smears and body fluids

Histotechnologists, who prepare surgical samples on glass slides for pathologists’ use in making diagnoses

Pathology assistants, who describe and prepare surgical specimens

“From the time phlebotomy draws the patient’s blood, to when lab support puts the test in the computer, to when it is processed by lab technologists, it’s all about teamwork,” says Ginny Thomes, medical technologist, hematology.

Starting this month, BIDMC’s lab teams will use several new machines. Fetal fibronectin testing, which predicts the onset of labor, will become available online at BIDMC, and a new flow cytometer will measure AIDS patients’ T-cells and diagnose leukemia and lymphoma.
But while technology holds promise, the nationwide shortage of lab technologists remains a challenge. Many educational programs in the field have closed, and increasingly lab professionals are moving into the pharmaceutical field, or specializing in such areas as molecular biology.

Numerous hospital lab technologist positions await those venturing into this exciting field. “It’s meaningful work, and you’re on the diagnostic end, even if you’re not a doctor, ” says clinical manager Joan MacDonald, M.S. Adds Mohammed, “The work’s always different from shift to shift.”

To learn more about laboratory technology work at BIDMC, contact Gina McCormack, technical director, at (66)7-2342.

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