Lisa Bemis had open-heart surgery at Riley when she was 15. It was that experience that led her back to the hospital as a critical-care nurse.
By Maureen Gilmer, Riley Children’s Health senior writer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org
Lisa Bemis was barely 15 years old when she decided she was going to become a nurse on the cardiovascular critical care unit at Riley Hospital for Children.
As a teen, she underwent open-heart surgery by Dr. Mark Turrentine to repair an atrial septal defect (ASD), a congenital heart defect.
Doctors had told her parents that the hole in the wall separating the two upper chambers of her heart might close on its own, negating the need for surgery, so they chose to wait. But the hole did not close, and eventually the swimmer and softball player’s endurance began to falter.
“I started having symptoms at around 13, and it just got worse,” she said. “They did more echos and heart caths and decided it needed to be closed.”
Today, Bemis, a mother of two, has found her home at Riley, working with patients diagnosed with various heart conditions.
“You get all ages and all stages on the Heart Center and a wide variety of defects,” she said. “It’s amazing what we get to do here.”
On Friday, she was caring for newborn Wren Souders, born just six hours earlier. Wren, daughter of Dylan Souders and Rachel Sigmund, is in the CVICU for treatment of tetralogy of Fallot, a four-pronged heart defect that was diagnosed when Sigmund was 32 weeks’ pregnant.
As Bemis tended to her tiny patient, she said, “I’m the luckiest person in the world to get to work with these little ones, and the older ones, too.”
She also gets to work with the surgeon who saved her life, Dr. Turrentine, a legend at Riley.
“If one of my kids ever needed surgery, he would be the one to do it,” she said.
She is humble about her own past, explaining that her heart defect was nothing compared to what the patients go through in the CVICU.
It did, however, point her in the direction of a career she loves and one where she hopes she makes a difference with the kids – and adults – in her care.
“I remember there was a young girl who was worried about her scar from surgery, and I told her about my experience and showed her the tip of my scar. It’s something to be proud of,” she shared. “It shows an important time in your life when you had to be a fighter.”
Returning to Riley as a CVICU nurse is a full-circle moment for Bemis, who graduated from Indiana University.
“It feels surreal, 100 percent,” she said. “Everybody has hopes and dreams at that age, and things can change. But when people say they’re living the dream, I absolutely am living my dream.”
She’s a dream co-worker as well.
“Lisa is an absolutely amazing nurse and person,” said Melissa Keesling, manager of clinical operations for the CVICU. “She is a very hard worker, and she takes amazing care of our heart kids.”
Photos by Maureen Gilmer, mgilmer1@iuhealth.org
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Mark W. Turrentine, MD
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