43
Bobi Jo Piper cared for premature child for nearly two years
CANFIELD
Three-year-old Sabashtyan Haefke practically flew into the arms of Bobi Jo Piper, his daily caregiver for nearly two years until three months ago.
“I was afraid he wouldn’t recognize me,” said Piper, giving Sabashtyan, who was born 11 weeks premature, a big hug.
It was a heart-warming reunion.
“Bobi Jo was a godsend,” agreed Sabashtyan’s parents, of Austintown, during an interview at Maxim Healthcare Services in Poland, where Piper works and who was recently named the firm’s Regional Caregiver of the Year. She was judged on her work with Sabashtyan.
Piper, who was previously named Maxim’s Ohio Caregiver of the Year, will travel to Orlando, Fla., next month, where she and three other regional honorees will vie for Maxim’s National Caregiver of the Year award.
Now in its seventh year, the Caregiver of the Year Award celebrates nurses and home health care aides for the key roles they play in delivering quality, patient-centered care to some of the nation’s most medically fragile and chronically ill patients, said Ryan Capretta, operations manager at Maxim’s Poland office.
Videos of Piper, of Canfield, and the other candidates at work, will be shown at the presentation ceremony.
“I’m still shocked at being named Regional Caregiver of the Year. I’m humbled and honored to be listed among the other nurses across the country,” said Piper, 35.
Piper, who said she has known all her life that she wanted to take care of people, comes by that instinct honestly. It is sort of a family business.
Her father is Dr. Thomas Bowser III of Canfield, and her mother, Marilyn, works with her husband in the office. Her grandfather is a dentist, her sister a registered nurse, and her grandmother an optometrist.
Piper also has personal insight into the challenges parents face who have special-needs children.
She and her husband, Greg Piper, of Canfield, have a daughter, Willow, 4, who was also born premature. Willow has cerebral palsy, a sensory-processing disorder and is developmentally delayed.
“It gives me a little more sensitivity to parents and what they are going through,” Piper said.
When Sabashtyan, who was born 11 weeks early, came home Nov. 8, 2016, from Akron Children’s, where he was a patient for 13 months, he still had a feeding tube, was on a ventilator and now has chronic lung disease.
While Sabashtyan was in the hospital, his parents, Lisa Haefke and Dan Paris, stayed in the Ronald McDonald House for more than a year, sometimes together and sometimes taking turns.
“I was a first-time mother. I didn’t know how to take care of a normal baby. It was pretty scary stuff,” Haefke said. “Bobi Jo helped me a lot. She answered all my questions, like when he developed hand, foot and mouth disease.”
“At first, it was really hard, but now that he is getting better, it’s easier. She was a blessing that came to us,” Paris said of Piper. “I still lean on her,” Haefke said.
Since Piper last saw Sabashtyan, he has become taller, bigger and more talkative, his mother said.
Piper said she also enjoys training other caregivers, which she said helps with the continuity of care in the way things are done.
“Not only is Bobi Jo one of our most dependable caregivers, she has also played an integral role in the training and development of many other caregivers,” Capretta said.
Piper said the most difficult part of the job is working herself out of a job after bonding with patients and their parents.
“You become family. I still bawl when I leave. I expect Christmas Eve pictures,” she said to Sabasytyan’s parents.