Wednesday, April 21, 2010

My Mom is "The One"

My mom has been working at Children's Medical Center of Dallas for about 25 years. Today they honored her with an award called "The One".

John & I went up to the hospital to attend the ceremony. When we got there, my mom showed us around. It's been a while since I'd been there and they've really made a lot of changes.

First they have "the trains". That's really an understatement. They have a train room. This section of the train room has the sky line of Dallas.
They have multiple trains running all the time. They have permanent scenery up - here the train is going through the mountains. The little kids come here to watch the trains and they get very excited when they see the trains coming.
Then they have this castle. We saw these two little kids come running up to look for the princess.
Aikman's Endzone. Back in the day, Troy Aikman donated either money or stuff to create this little area for the kids. There are computers, games and such where the kids can come and "get away" for a little bit. It's really very nice.

But I digress. We were talking about my mom.
This is where she 'lives'. This is her spot. Mom in her natural habitat - anyplace where there are pictures of her grandkids.

When my mom first started, she worked for Dr. Ginsburg. I don't recall how long she worked for him but it was a while. (Unfortunately, he wasn't there today or I'd have taken his picture). Then Dr. Ginsburg went to go work for UT Southwestern and Dr. Steinberg took over. My mom worked for him forever!
In the old days, my mother's partner in crime was Yvonne. Basically, they were the medical student coordinators. All of the doctors that did a pediatric rotation at Children's Medical Center did so through my mom. She is known by her first name, like Cher or Madonna. If you say "Ask Del", people know who she is and where they need to find her.
Mom & Yvonne.

A few years ago, they had some reorganization going on in this department. Dr. Steinberg stepped down so that he could spend more time with the patients and focus more on teaching residents & medical students and Yvonne went to go work at "the school", which I assume is UT Southwestern.

Now the job that my mom & Yvonne did for so many years takes a whole department to do. After they split everything up, my mom now works with the medical students. Her new boss is Dr. Adhikari but she still does work for Dr. Steinberg and she works very closely with Dr. Gan.
Dr. Steinberg, Dr. Gan, mom & Dr. Adhikari.

We had to be at the auditorium early. My poor mom - she was so nervous.
Here we are goofing around and relaxing a bit before things get started.

They showed these really cute videos before they did the announcement. The first is a snippet where the people that mom works with were interviewed. They had a lot of wonderful things to say about her.


Then they interviewed her. They asked her what she thought about being named "The One".



Finally, they announced her name and she went up to the stage to receive her award from Mr. Durovitch, the president of Childrens.
Mom & Dr. Gan with "the One" award.
Me, Mom & John. We are very proud of her.
I would agree. My mom IS the One!
Below is the video where she's accepting the award. All the cheering you hear is from all the people that know her and support her. It was great to see how much everyone appreciates her. She's very proud of where she works and put a lot of work & love into her job.