What a physician taught Kimberly Godsey when she was a nurse-in-training

This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

Many years ago, when Kimberly Godsey was training to become a nurse practitioner, she was doing rounds with a physician named Dr. Joe Seibert.

It was an average day until they visited a patient experiencing nausea and abdominal pain. When the pair left the room, Seibert told Godsey the woman’s diagnosis. It was terminal pancreatic cancer.

Then Seibert did something she’d never seen a physician do before. It was a specific way of easing the pain, for both the patient and her loved ones.

“He picked up the phone and called her husband and said, ‘Hey, I’m worried about your wife. Can you come up to the clinic?'”

 As soon as Seibert hung up the phone, he asked his assistant to schedule all the tests and follow-ups the woman would need. It’s a process that normally takes weeks, but the assistant scheduled the appointments within an hour.

When they went back to the patient’s room to share the diagnosis, the woman received the news with all her tests scheduled, and her husband by her side.

“We’re supposed to save lives,” Seibert told Godsey. “But eventually in your career, there will come a time when you can’t save everybody. But what you can do is you can change how they experience it.”

A few years passed and as Godsey went on to care for her own patients, she kept the doctor’s lesson in the back of her mind.

In 2014, Godsey’s mom, Pat Montgomery-Kane, began experiencing extreme fatigue and abdominal pain. Then one day, Godsey got a call from Seibert, who had become her mother’s primary care doctor.

“And he said, ‘Hey Kim, I just saw your mom. Are you coming to her appointment tomorrow?'” Godsey recalled. She had not planned to be there.

“He said, ‘I’m worried about your mom. It would be nice if you could come.'”

The next day, Seibert diagnosed her mom with terminal pancreatic cancer. Her mom received the news with her three children by her side.

 And just as he had done with his terminal patient years ago, Seibert asked his assistant to schedule all of Godsey’s mother’s follow-up appointments for the very same day: a CAT scan at 1 p.m. and a follow-up consultation at 4 p.m.

After working for 10 years as a nurse practitioner, Godsey says Seibert’s example of compassion continues to leave a mark.

“ I take that lesson I learned from Dr. Seibert so many years ago into my personal life and into my professional life every day,” Godsey said. “Because I’ve learned that it’s the little things that we can do that actually can make a huge difference [in] how people experience life.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.