The only contact most patients at CarolinaEast Medical Center have with hospital laboratory staff is when phlebotomists stop by their rooms to draw blood for testing.
The lab’s 65 employees, including two pathologists, perform more than 1.5 million tests per year in the areas of chemistry, hematology, microbiology, molecular PCR, transfusion services, cytology, histology, and anatomic pathology.
“Each one of those areas is a specialized area, so we do different testing in those departments depending on what type of specimen we receive,” said Jennifer Lewis, laboratory director. “So, we can do anything from diagnosing cancer to telling someone they have high cholesterol to blood typing.”
“She was a big person in a little body,” lab manager Mallory Kennedy said.
“She really paid attention to details, Lewis said. “She worked a lot with the outpatient clinic downstairs, and that was really important down there. She dotted her Is and crossed her Ts.”
She loved children, Lewis remembered, and often trained students in her field.
Both women said she is greatly missed.
One bulletin board was decorated for several months in her honor, but was recently taken down, Lewis said. Not that the lab intends to let her memory fade: a picture of her will be permanently placed on a wall at the entrance to the lab today, April 9, on the anniversary of her death.