For your typical teenager, turning 19 years old is usually not the most momentous occasion. Age 16 brings the ability to drive a car. At 18, you legally become an “adult.” But 19 is often not much more than one year closer to 21.
But to fraternal twins Joanna and Jill Krawiecki, reaching age 19 is anything but ordinary. It is a gift, delivered, in large part, thanks to the quality care provided by Brigham and Women’s Hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and especially by nurses Diane MacGillivray and Carol Shockley.
Having been born ten weeks premature and weighing in at just over two pounds each, the Krawiecki twins made a difficult entry into this world at 7:51 and 8:10 a.m. respectively one cold winter morning in January of 1984. To further complicate matters, both girls were born with a heart murmur. While Joanna’s could be corrected through medication, Jill had to undergo surgery, as she also suffered a grade-one bleed in her brain upon arrival.
The twins spent a total of 28 days in the BWH NICU, and an additional month at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, while they gained weight and became strong enough to breathe on their own. During their time at BWH, MacGillivray and Shockley monitored their progress around the clock and served as a source of comfort to the Krawiecki family.
“Diane and Carol really took charge,” recalls Janet Krawiecki, the twins’ mother. “They worked with the girls every day to get them breathing on their own. In the age of new technology and practices in neonatal medicine, many parents question the decisions their physicians and nurses make, but I never once questioned anything Carol and Diane did for Jill or Joanna. They were just outstanding.”
“You get a sense of which babies are going to do well. They may go through a rough time, but ultimately pull through and are okay,” said Shockley. “I think Diane and I had that sense from the Krawiecki girls. They were so full of feistiness. We looked at them and knew we had some keepers here.”
Janet and her husband John were so pleased with the care the nurses provided that they decided to honor both Shockley and MacGillivray in a special way.
“I didn’t have middle names picked out for the girls at the time, as they arrived so early,” explained Janet. “My husband and I had met with Diane and Carol just twice at that point, but even then, we could already tell they were going to play a big part in the girls’ care. So, we gave each of our daughters the name of her primary care nurse as a middle name.”
“They actually named them after us – Joanna Carol and Jill Diane,” said MacGillivray. “That is hands-down the single most amazing thing that has ever happened to me in my career as a nurse. The Krawieckis are the only family to have named a child after me.”
Shockley and MacGillivray, who last saw the twins when they were 4 years old and attended a NICU reunion at BWH, were reunited with Joanna and Jill on January 16, 2003, exactly 19 years to the day of their birth. Only this time, the girls did not return to the NICU as visitors, they came as prospective nurses.
“Carol and Diane have truly been an inspiration to us,” said Jill. “They have touched both of our lives. That, in addition to the fact that there is a growing shortage of nurses, has motivated me to choose a career in nursing.”
“Nurses saved my life,” added Joanna. “I would like to show my appreciation to all nurses by giving back what I received as a NICU patient by becoming a nurse myself.”
Jill and Joanna are currently in their freshman year of undergraduate studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMass-Amherst). Both twins are pre-nursing majors and participate in the Nurse Talent Advancement Program (TAP), for which only 25 students were selected out of the 150 freshman accepted into the pre-nursing major. Their TAP professor also chose them to be Nurse TAP Ambassadors for the April Open House to talk with prospective pre-nursing students. They are also members of the Student Nurses Association, for which Jill is a freshman representative.
Based on the recommendation of their nursing professors, the girls sought the opportunity to spend a day shadowing nurses as a means to learn first-hand what nursing is all about. Joanna and Jill immediately thought of their nurses at BWH and set about contacting them to make it all happen.
“I don’t think many former patients actually follow in the footsteps of their nurses and are willing to come back to even visit, let alone shadow them,” said Joanna.
“The fact that both Diane and Carol are still NICU nurses at BWH after all these years is amazing in and of itself,” said Marianne Metcalfe, nurse manager for the NICU at BWH. “To be able to bring these girls back 19 years to the day later, as future nurses themselves, was just wonderful.”
The twins spent an entire shift with Shockley and MacGillivray, observing everything from feeding the babies to writing patient reports. Metcalfe also arranged for a cake to celebrate the girls’ birthday.
“Jill got to see a baby, who was just coming out of the same surgery she had when she was here in the NICU,” said Shockley. “I think it was really worthwhile for her to be able to look at the baby and finally understand where her surgical scars came from.”
“It’s hard to believe that once upon a time that was me,” said Jill. “Shadowing at the Brigham was really an experience of a lifetime.”
“I think I learned more in one day of shadowing than I could have possibly imagined,” added Joanna. “As my dad puts it, Boston is the ‘medical mecca’ of the world, and we are just so happy to have had this opportunity at one of its premier hospitals.”
The Krawiecki twins will return to UMass-Amherst for spring semester next week. When they aren’t busy studying to maintain their excellent grade point averages (Joanna with a 4.0 and Jill with a 3.6), both girls participate in various extracurricular activities. Joanna plays intramural coed volleyball, and Jill plays the flute in the UMass Minuteman Marching Band, for which she is the only freshman non-music major in her section.
“You have to remember that the concept of neonatal intensive care was still in its infancy 19 years ago,” explained MacGillivray. “If children did survive, the assumption was that they would endure lifelong health problems and learning disabilities. So to see how wonderfully these girls have fared is just phenomenal.”
“Jill and Joanna are magnificent young ladies,” added Shockley. “They are so tenacious and motivated--something we had a sense of from the very beginning. It is clear they really know what they want, and I look forward to learning about how they attain it.”