From Hidden Brain Media, I'm Shankar Vedantam. This is my unsung hero,

stories where one person reached out to help another in a time of need.

My story is about a time of need.

My story is about a group of unsung heroes.

He just pulled up a chair and we talked, I'd say for about 90 minutes or something.

I don't know if she really understands or appreciates the full impact that she's had in my life and still continues to have.

Today's story comes from Joanne Foley.

In 1980, Joanne was a new nurse at a hospital in Oregon.

She was working the night shift in the maternity ward when a baby girl was born.

The baby was missing parts of her brain and skull and was expected to die soon.

As Joanne had seen in similar cases, babies in this condition, where nothing could be done

for them, were often placed in a bassinet and received minimal

attention until they died. But Joanne says the Night Shift supervisor, a woman

named Nancy Allspatch, had a different approach.

She would go into the nursery multiple times through the shift

and hold that baby and she held her tight and she put her face right down next to the baby and she talked to her and she even fed her a bottle and rocked her in the big rocking chair and she treated that baby as though she were her own.

And I was so impressed with the fact that Nancy did that. The rest of us kind of didn't know what to do.

And I always wished that I could tell that mom or that the mom would know that Nancy did not let that baby leave

this world without knowing the basic need of human touch and genuine love.

And what I would want to say is I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry for what you went through not only because of what you went through but because of where we were in the medical world then and what we didn't know that we know now.

And I am so grateful to Nancy Allspatch for teaching me

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