Many of us pass Wilcox Medical Center every day as we drive to and fro on Kaua‘i’s main highway, Kuhio Highway. There, next door, is also the Garden Isle Healthcare &Rehabilitation. For a month, I got to experience both, and can claim that we have a treasure unaware.
I think you have to go inside, but it takes a patient experience to know it. Most of us just use the daily outpatient services. But I got to be inside for a month, due to an accidental fall I had on May 28 when I fractured my hip.
After the ambulance took me to Wilcox, where I had surgery and a rod was inserted, I remained there for a lengthy, four-week recovery. I am an independent documentary filmmaker and Kaua‘i native with three generations of family roots in Kapahi. I’ve been traveling a lot due to my filmmaking career of 30-plus years, and after six years in Brooklyn, where I had just finished making a film about a New York City jazz artist, I moved back to Kaua‘i in July 2019.
I know what it is to break a bone. Over the years, I have broken the two bones below my left knee while walking out to see the Kilauea lava flow; had a shoulder fracture when I tripped over a visiting friend’s suitcase; and, three years ago, I broke my leg while traveling in Washington D.C. and had surgery there at an Adventist hospital before returning to my apartment back in Brooklyn to do my rehab and physical therapy at home.
I don’t remember my doctor or my nurses at the hospital. I kept no records. I just wanted to get home. But this time at Kaua‘i in Wilcox as I recovered from surgery and then was moved next door to the Garden Isle Healthcare &Rehabilitation for 20 days of rehab, I began to experience the workers there and their very-caring and friendly ways. They reminded me of my Philippine relatives, as many of the nurses and nursing assistants were from the Philippines.
So I started taking photographs of many of them, asking them to remove their masks so I could remember their faces and capture their smiles. They so inspired me with their warmth and kindness, and even their sense of humor. One night, the nurse came in all bundled up. I said, “It must be cold out there. (I had turned off the air conditioning in my room). Liza replied with a straight, masked face, “It’s snowing!” We both cracked up!
And, every day, lovely Nora, an older woman from the Ilocos region of the Philippines, came to clean my room. Our spirits connected though we hardly spoke. We always waved hello when I passed her in the hallway as I wheeled my wheelchair or walked with my walker to the physical-therapy gym.
With all the staff, I would ask where they were from. Most of the physical and occupational therapists were from the mainland, and a few nursing staff were also mainland-born. But most of the nursing staff had come from far away. Most were from Ilocos Norte or Ilocos Sur, a few from Cebu, and also from Tarlac, Pampanga, Manila, and other parts of the PI.
Some of them, like Imee, Raquel, Brena, Liza, Glenda and Daisy, were very curious about my knowledge of the Philippines. When I told them I was a Hawai‘i-born Filipino and that my mother was from Quezon Province near Manila, their curiosity grew.
I had lived in Manila during my high-school years and had attended the American School in Makati, Manila, during the ‘60s, when my Kaua’i-born Filipino father was stationed there as a civilian with the U.S. Army. This got us talking and sharing stories. I told them of my colorful life as a teenager there — producing band concerts for my high school and private dance parties packed with schoolmates and local Filipino friends; doing a radio disc-jockey stint on the weekends at the famous rock station DZRJ; and hanging with young Filipinos who today are the Philippines’ leading politicians as well as artists and business people.
The nurses and assistants came in to give me shots, take my blood sugar and blood pressure, read my temperature and changed my bed sheets — all in a day’s work for them. But for me, it was a chance to get to know them as people. My world of travel and exotic places had shrunk to a small room and a hospital bed. Their masked faces hid their smiles, but I could see them in their eyes.
They were always kind, helpful and gracious during the month I was there at Wilcox and GI Rehab. I had no complaints. None. If anything, I kept saying to myself, I wonder if Kaua‘i knows what a treasure we have here. Not just the rehab staff, but I found the same was true with the physical and occupational therapists, as well as the Wilcox hospital staff, including my doctors — Dr. Adler, and my surgeon, Dr. Judd.
What was even more surprising to me was when I asked the Wilcox hospital nursing staff where they were from, many were Kaua’i born-and-raised. It felt so gratifying to know that many of our young people after their studies had come back home to Kaua‘i and found jobs here at Wilcox. With the COVID, I had heard talk of staying away from the hospital and fears of easily getting sick there. Not for me. I was healthy the whole time, never coming down with anything, and my broken hip was healing well.
I begen taking photos of the staff without their masks. I so wanted to remember them. I wrote down their names. And I promised them I would write a good report to their administrators. So here is my report, made public, because I am so thankful for our treasures at Wilcox and GI Rehab. I have to shout it out to everyone on Kaua‘i with the hope that you will never fear entering these places. Good angels await you. Good hands will care for you.
Many thanks to each one.
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Stephanie Castillo recently moved to Hilo on Hawai‘i Island. Needing caregiving for another three to six months, her older sister Zenaida Sawyer has opened her home to Stephanie, 72. An independent documentary filmmaker for 30-plus years, she has created 10 documentaries in the last 30 years and won an Emmy Award for her 1992 film “Simple Courage,” which tells the tale of Hawai‘i’s leprosy exiles sent to Kalaupapa on Moloka‘i and St. Damien’s intervention. Her 11th film is in the works and is about the 1924 Hanapepe massacre on Kaua‘i.
