“I feel that this is my way of helping out the community. If I can help one person, then I can help another. Sometimes that help comes in the form of making the public feel a little better about coming to an entity such as ours, or nursing staff feeling more comfortable about working in a place such as ours."
"I was once told in the very beginning when I first started in security that ‘security is only as good as he or she wants to be’. However, that also unfolds as security is only going to be as good as the trainer. And that’s my belief that if I let you get to know me, and if I can get to know you and your family, then I feel better about making you feel secure about working in our environment. "
"So, with all that being said, it was very early in the morning, on a Monday morning, October 23rd, 2017. I was answering a code red, a fire call down in the mechanical room in the OR, when I had a massive heart attack. I didn’t know what hit me, just all of a sudden. After coming in that morning, I woke up three weeks later in the veteran’s hospital and I was told that I had had a heart attack- a widowmaker to be exact. "
"I was told by my partner at that time that he said he had asked me a question, he said I had answered him, and then he watched my eyes roll in the back of my head, and I was dead before I hit the floor. With that, the OR nursing staff with Dr Dubinski (and Cheryl Hester, who was ‘one of the contributing factors to my living’), had pulled me out of the water that was on the floor of the mechanical room and they, I guess, started the defibrillation, and at that point, took me to the PACU department, and then from there, I was rushed to the emergency room, then transferred to Duke."
"During that time, in the emergency room, they put a defibrillator on my neck, because I guess that was the only place where they could put it at that time to keep me stable. Like I said, I woke up three weeks later, in one of the units in the Veteran’s hospital near Duke. With all that being said, and after struggling, I was able to come home the day before Thanksgiving."
"Don’t get me wrong, I struggle every day, but I take my medicine on a regular regiment, I quit drinking, I quit smoking for a while, and I try to pay it forward and I try to give back as much as I was given. Without the nursing staff here, at Maria Parham, I wouldn’t have made it."
"(On December 15th), my mind said I was ready to come back, but I think they really wanted me to have time to heal, so I finally came back 4.5 months after it all happened. I came back in at the end of February 2018.”
When Tim was asked if his perception of his role within the hospital and the community has changed since that event or if he’s always had the same mindset, he responded, “I’ve always had the same idea; if I could help one person, that I can help another. I’m not necessarily the best at what I do, I want to be the best, therefore I try to take pride in what I do. If I could pay it forward, then that’s what I’m gonna keep on doing. The nursing staff essentially are my heroes. I never make a promise (with the exception of a few), because no matter how I look at it, never make a promise you can’t keep. I’ve made five promises in my entire life: to God, and this country, and to my family. Other than that, I’ll tell you I’m on the way, but I’ll do my best, and that’s all I could ask for. "
~Tim Grossfeld, Security