Page 4 - Geri Smith News Today

The need for blood donations has soared along with COVID-19 deaths, which are closing in on 400,000 in the United States and just hit a new daily record of more than 4,300. Blood shortages have been reported nationwide during the coronavirus pandemic, with life-saving blood supplies dwindling, putting patients in emergency rooms and hospitals at risk.  Franciscan Health Michigan City has scheduled two blood drives to help make up for the lack of donations taking place at workplaces and schoo...

Honoring Our Nurses Nurses comfort, care, educate, console, relate, endear and provide direction and assistance. They are at the forefront when we are sick; their work responsibilities immense, their efforts tireless and their commitment endless. They are the heart and soul of medical facilities including residential care, hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices, schools, in-home care and much more. To celebrate National Nurse Week, May 6-12, 2019, The Times Media Co.; Title Sponsor, Methodis...

Northwest Health has honored two nurses with Daisy Awards for extraordinary and compassionate service. The annual awards were established to honor the late J. Patrick Barnes, whose family wanted to recognize the nurses who treated him after he died at 33 in 1999 because of complications from the idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura autoimmune disease. The health care system honored Patricia (Patti) Martin, the manager of the Infusion Center at Northwest Health — Porter, with a Daisy Award. ...

St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago named Nina Stur its new chief nursing officer and president of patient care services. Stur started as a registered nurse in the medical surgical unit at the hospital 37 years ago, and has served as interim chief nursing officer since January. She previously served as director of case management and associate director of patient care services at St. Catherine, filling each position for a decade. “Nina is a dynamic and well-respected collaborator with e...

MUNSTER — North Point Orthopaedics opened a new $10 million medical office building in Munster five times as large as its previous office down the street. The new medical office at 9445 Calumet Ave. in Munster that North Point Orthopaedics moved into last month offers physical therapy, braces, X-Rays, ultrasound, injections for joint pain and other orthopedic services. It also has urgent care services that allow patients to walk in without appointments to get orthopedic care within in a...

Did she ever threaten to do that? >> yeah, many times. wed do something wrong, and she would say, well, you stop doing that or im going to send you off to geris house. >> and so they lived a life of packing up and fleeing state to state, one flop house to the next, searching for the cheapest place to stay and then skip out of. hunger constant. medical care, nonexistent. when money ran out, as it often did, shirley drove to the nearest truck stop. the girls would bed down in the car and watch shi...

As shirley explained to strangers that she was their grandmother. that their parents had been killed in a car accident. >> i knew that everything that was happening to us was completely wrong at a very, very young age. >> why had she been taken? she didnt know. not for money, certainly. there were no ransom demands. and without peppers birth certificate, shirley couldnt use her to score public assistance. though she did use renee that way. frightened, compliant renee, eager for a mothers love, e...

And it was like a miracle. >> geris story that shirley who took the girls had been her friend turned roommate turned babysitter. >> she said ill babysit for you. ill take care of her while you work. i said, well, thats great because i really thought i was blessed. >> first it was renee she looked after. then renee and pepper and then two years later little brother raymond leonard smith jr. wait. brother? it wasnt just the two girls. there was a younger brother the girls never knew they had. the ...

Barbara, was a child abandoning drug addled prostitute, probably dead. could this woman really be their mother? hardly a claim allred could take on simple faith. >> i asked her to come in and see me the very next day, which she was very anxious and happy to do. i asked her to bring whatever evidence she had. >> in that meeting, the woman presented her evidence. >> she brought some photos that she had of pepper and renee when they were very little. >> she told allred she had been a waitress when ...

Shirley had been her friend, she said. told her about a woman working in the sex trade named geri smith who didnt want her babies. and one day shirley showed up at barbaras house with a 3-month-old baby she called rhonda patricia smith. barbara could see it was a little iffy but she wanted that baby so badly. and so she said she ignored the red flags. >> nope, didnt care. didnt really care. >> she was going to see to it, she said, that rhonda was loved and cared for by the best parents she could...