EAST LIVERPOOL Association honors hospital worker

She is the recreational activities coordinator for the hospital.
By TRAVIS REED
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
EAST LIVERPOOL -- Fay Lower is almost always smiling.
But her family, several of her co-workers and others watched her cry as she won the Albert E. Dyckes Health Care Worker of the Year Award.
The honor was given by the Ohio Hospital Association at a ceremony in Columbus recently. The award was created in 1996 to honor a hospital employee who "demonstrates leadership, reflects the values and ideals of Ohio's health-care facilities, goes above and beyond the call of duty [and] gives back to the community," according to the OHA.
Her job
As the recreational activities coordinator at East Liverpool City Hospital, Lower works with patients recovering from surgery and in the hospital's mental health unit, planing activities to help them feel comfortable during what can be lengthy stays in the hospital.
Earlier this year, Lower was named worker of the year at the East Liverpool Hospital.
Besides her work there, Lower helps raise money for the Beaver Local High School band at sporting events, and has volunteered for the Girl Scouts for 13 years. She has spent her vacations watching over area youths on their vacations in places like Disney World and New York City.
Last Christmas, she made and delivered home-cooked meals to National Guardsmen stationed in the area to protect a nuclear power plant.
Right now, she's helping a man who will soon become a double amputee build a ramp on his home so he can enter and exit in his electric wheelchair.
Start of career
Shortly after getting married in 1981, Lower started part time in the hospital's dietary department. Six years later, she became the recreational activities coordinator.
Lower plans activities like exercise, cooking and pet therapy sessions for patients. She has established a clothes closet, shopped and sewn personal items for patients. She carries a pager and has gone to the hospital off-duty just to be with a lonely patient. If they are able, she takes them for walks outside and calls for updates when they've left her care.
Lower says her job isn't always easy. Many of the patients are anxious to go home, and some are otherwise obstinate. Sometimes, it's all she can do to persuade them to leave their beds and join an activity.
Lower said losing patients is tough because she works so closely with them.
"It's like losing a grandparent over and over again," Lower said. "You learn to love them a lot -- even if they're cranky."
She said she gets past the difficult parts because of the satisfaction in helping someone else.
"I do it because of the patients I work with -- how they respond and the pleasures they get out of it," Lower said. "It's nice to make them smile when they really don't have anything to smile about."
treed@vindy.com