A mother and daughter who work for Rochester Regional Health continue to make an impact in the community, even through challenges COVID-19 has brought to their personal lives.
Before Deb Stamps became a member of Rochester Regional Health’s Executive Leadership Team, she was a nurse at Rochester General Hospital and a home aide. Stamps has been with Rochester Regional for 31 years. She’s earned degrees from Monroe Community College, SUNY Brockport, Nazareth College, RIT and St. John Fisher College.
At 17-years-old, Stamps she had her first and only child, Marcella, who watched her mother work long mornings and nights in the nursing field.
“Marcella was always saying that she would never get into health care, it’s too much work,” Stamps recalled. “It’s long hours. You bring it home; you don’t just leave work it’s always with you.”
That thought process changed for Marcella Carr as she grew up, as she was influenced by her mother’s work ethic. Carr, too, went on to earn a degree from SUNY Brockport and continued into the nursing field. Carr is now a manager at the Clifton Springs Nursing Home, a Rochester Regional Health facility.
“I’m really proud of her,” said Stamps.
“I think she’s done an amazing job. I would love for her to care for me any day,” she added.
In late March, Stamps was diagnosed with COVID-19, and Carr’s nurse instinct to always help – especially with the patient being her own mom – was put to the test.
I’ll never forget how helpless I felt not being able to do what I needed to do,” explained Carr. “As a nurse you step up and step in and you go for it, and at that time I couldn’t, and it was very anxiety provoking to say the least…I’m glad she’s still here.
Stamps said she had a fever for 15 days.
“I didn’t even know what I was experiencing,” she added. “It was like an out-of-body thing.”
Stamps recovered and says she is extremely grateful for her colleagues and everyone working on the front lines.
“Anything we do is really about patients first,” said Stamps. “This week, it’s Nurses Week, it’s just an awesome week. It’s one of kind during these COVID challenging days.”
As a leader in the nursing field and someone who had the virus, Stamps urges people now to practice social distance, because “you don’t know who had it.”
You have to think beyond yourself,” she says, “and nurses do that every day.
Carr, a mother herself, is thinking of creative ways to celebrate the woman who influenced career on Mother’s Day – from a distance.
— 13 WHAM