Our Maine Street's Aroostook Issue 2 : Fall 2010 | Page 62

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A Caregiver for All Seasons
By Bill Flagg, Cary Medical Center

In all the talk about healthcare reform often not
mentioned are the men and women who, day in and day out,
serve the needs of patients 24-hours a day, seven days a week, 365
days each year. One particular individual who will soon celebrate
a magnificent milestone at Cary Medical Center is Laboratory
Technologist, Mary Lou Nelson. Born and raised in New Sweden,
Maine and a graduate of Caribou High School, Mary Lou had no
idea what her future held as she completed one year of college at
the University of Maine. Upon coming back
from college for the summer, she learned that
the local hospital, then named Cary Memorial
Hospital, had a new pathologist who wanted
to train staff to open a more dynamic hospital
laboratory. That was 1960 and the rest, as they
say, is history.

Joan McElwain, now manager of the
Cary Medical Center Laboratory describes
the experience of a young phlebotomist in
her first infant blood draw under the watchful
mentoring of Mary Lou Nelson.

“Imagine, a newborn, hours old,
squirming all arms and legs, parents and
grandparents looking on in amazement. Your
job is to greet this little miracle by needle
sticking the infant for a blood test. It’s your first
time ever and you are very nervous. But you
have an angel at your side. She has been a test
subject for you and has given you confidence.
So, you go for it and the baby never felt a
thing.”

That is generally how patients describe having their
blood drawn by Mary Lou: “I never felt a thing,” “have you
done it yet,” “there is just something special about how she does
it.” People literally travel from outside the community to Cary
Medical Center to have Mary Lou do their blood drawing. Her
special sense of compassion is evident when you speak with her
about her skills.

“After all of these years of working in the lab I have come
into people’s lives at some of their most difficult moments here
in the hospital or at some of their most joyous times, like after
having a baby. If people feel like talking I can listen, but if they
prefer silence, I can do that too. I have always tried to keep the
patient at the center of everything I do.”

After joining Cary Memorial Hospital in 1960, Mary
Lou has spent the past near 50 years working in the hospital lab.
Speaking of the early days, she recalls manually counting white
blood cells and red cells and using pipettes by sucking on the end
of the glass tube, holding the other end with your finger, and
releasing the liquid into containers for study.

In 1964, Mary Lou became the manager of the Cary
Laboratory, a position she held during the transition to the new
Cary Medical Center in 1978. In 1987, she received the first
Cary Manager of the Year Award and in 1988 was named one of
three “employees of the decade”. Mary Lou also helped establish
the most successful blood donor program in Aroostook County,
60 Our Communities FALL & WINTER 09

a cholesterol screening clinic at the Cary Medical Center Health
fair, and, over the years, has helped screen more than 10,000
people to identify potential health risks. She has been a mentor,
trainer, and guide to hundreds of aspiring laboratory technologists
and phlebotomists and has touched the lives of untold numbers
of patients, families, and other co-workers.

Of all her training and mentoring experiences, one really
stands out to Mary Lou. The hospital had been approached by
the Loring Job Corps Center to offer workbased learning to some of their students. Mary
Lou was asked if she would take on one aspiring
student who wanted to be a phlebotomist.
She immediately recognized a spark in the
student’s eyes and a special compassion in
her nature. Ultimately, this woman became a
star phlebotomist overcoming many obstacles
and gaining the confidence that comes with
success.

While her professional career has been
one of memorable successes, Mary Lou has
also experienced healthcare from the patient
perspective. In 1987, she discovered a lump
on her breast, which soon after diagnosed
as breast cancer. After mastectomy surgery,
chemotherapy, and radiation treatments, she
went in and out of remission. Eventually, she
was referred for a then experimental treatment
and a bone marrow transplant, but due to
the experimental nature of the medicine, her
insurance company would not cover the cost of the procedure.
To her surprise, the people she worked with at the hospital,
including doctors, nurses, her colleague