Imagine being the parent of a very sick child. You rush them to the local ER close to where you live in rural Texas. Your baby’s condition is critical and requires a higher level of care than can be provided there. A call goes out to Cook Children’s Medical Center and, within the hour, a helicopter lands just outside your hometown ER. A fluffy brown teddy bear is perched in one of its windows, signaling the arrival of Cook Children’s Teddy Bear Transport.

Out of the helicopter jumps a three-person neonatal and pediatric critical care team including a nurse, respiratory therapist and paramedic. They’re wearing blue flight suits matching Cook Children’s signature blue peaks. A patch on each of their sleeves features a teddy bear in aviator gear and identifies them as members of an elite team.

In addition to their experience and expertise in neonatal and pediatric critical care, the transport team is carrying what amounts to an intensive care unit in three small bags. Inside your child’s emergency room, they get to work stabilizing and prepping your little one for transport. You’re scared, but you breathe a sigh of relief knowing help—and hope—have arrived.

“The hospitals and providers that refer patients to us are often just as excited to see us as the parents,” said Stacy Putman, RT, Teddy Bear Transport director. “They've done everything they can for that child until the minute we get there, and then they see us and they're like, ‘Oh, thank goodness. I can breathe now,’ because they know that our team is going to come in and take care of them and the child. They don’t have the resources we have, which is why they call us, and sometimes they’re hanging on by a thread doing their best with what they have to keep that child alive.”

This scene plays out day after day as Teddy Bear Transport brings the specialized pediatric critical care services of Cook Children’s Medical Center to children’s doorsteps all across Texas, the United States and even other countries—Mexico, Switzerland and Venezuela, to name a few.

Now in its 40th year, the service responds to approximately 4,000 calls annually. Seventy percent of those are for ground transport and 30% for air. Most of the babies admitted to Cook Children’s neonatal intensive care unit arrive via Teddy Bear Transport. Some of the furthest transports are to bring patients to Cook Children’s Hyperinsulinism Center, which is one of only two centers of excellence for the treatment of this rare disorder in the country and one of six in the world.

The Early Years

Cook Children’s transport service began in 1982 with one leased ambulance and a few nurses that would be pulled from bedside patient care to answer calls for local neonatal transports. In 1984, the service purchased its first ambulance. 

In those early years, if a child needed to be airlifted to Cook Children’s, the transport team would hitch a ride in one of the CareFlite helicopters stationed at neighboring Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth. Back then, members of the transport team also had to use their ingenuity to retrofit adult medical devices to fit children. Not so today as device manufacturers now design equipment specifically for pediatrics.

By 1985, the service was conducting more than 300 transports a year. Two years later, Cook Children’s transport team officially became known as Teddy Bear Air with the purchase of its first aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air 90 with call sign N555TB. The plane made its first flight on Dec. 2, 1987, to pick up a patient in Wichita Falls with crew Cam Dodgin Brandt, RN EMT-P; Paul Shaffer, RN EMT-P; Bela Harvey, RT; and pilots Paul Hook and Howard Schack.

The years that followed saw steady growth in transports and the addition of a number of assets to the fleet and team. 

In 1992, Teddy Bear Air changed its name to Teddy Bear Transport to better reflect the full scope of its mission of providing both ground and air transport. Cook Children’s made the leap from sharing a helicopter with CareFlite to leasing its own helicopter in 2004 and, five years later, the health system moved from lease to own with the purchase of a new helicopter.

Over the years, transport assets bounced around to several Tarrant County bases and hangers due to the growth of the service and expansion of the medical center. In 2011, Teddy Bear Transport settled into its own dedicated base and current home at Meacham International Airport in Fort Worth.

One of the service’s most memorable moments came in 2017. As Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Texas’ Gulf Coast, Teddy Bear Transport was called upon to help evacuate vulnerable patients from Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi.

None of the past and current growth of this service would be possible without generous community donors. Long-time philanthropist and friend of Cook Children’s, Clarabele “Pit” Dodson, is one of them. Donations from Dodson made possible the purchase of several Teddy Bear Transport air assets, including a new jet in 2013. The jet’s tail number—N917TL— is Dodson’s birthday and the initials of her late husband, T.L. Dodson Jr., who was a World War II Navy bomber pilot.

The Making of a Transport Team

It’s one thing to deliver bedside care in the controlled environment of a hospital room outfitted with every medical technology a patient needs and supported by an entire staff of physicians, nurses and medical professionals. It’s another to do the same in the back of a helicopter while speeding through the air and sharing a very tight space with three team members and a patient.

“To be on the transport team you have to be the type of person that can take control of a situation,” Putman said. “Unlike in the hospital, we are out in the field on our own, not around our own doctors or other support systems like radiology, lab, pharmacy and all those people that are standing at your bedside. So you really have to be someone that can take control of a situation and be very confident, not arrogant, but confident in the training, policies and protocols that we've provided for you and in the decisions that you make out there.”

Melissa Irving, a 31-year veteran transport nurse who retired from Teddy Bear Transport in 2016, knows the field medicine nature of the job all too well. She once intubated a prematurely home-birthed baby on the family’s kitchen table before whisking the newborn off to the helicopter for transport to Cook Children’s.

It’s not a job for everyone, but the people who do it well tend to stay in for as long as physically possible.

People like Deborah Boudreaux, RN, MSN, CCRN, LP, CMTE. Over the past 35 years, Boudreaux has risen through the ranks from transport nurse to director of Teddy Bear Transport to her current position as Cook Children’s assistant vice president of nursing where transport services fall under her jurisdiction. But, ask her what she does and Boudreaux will tell you she’s a Teddy Bear Transport nurse first. 

“Transport is really in my blood,” Boudreaux said. “I will tell people I'm a transport nurse and they'll say, ‘No, you're not. You can't do that right now,’ but I just think it's the greatest job in the hospital or outside the hospital because you get to function in a very autonomous role.”

When the transport team arrives on scene, their teamwork kicks in, often without a word spoken. To the outsider looking in, it appears to be a carefully choreographed dance. 

“You work with your team so closely,” Boudreaux said while describing the relationship between team members. “It's just like a symphony. You just work together and do it. You don't even have to tell your team member next to you what you're doing because they already know. It’s kind of groupthink.”

But that symphony actually starts behind the scenes in the Teddy Bear Transport communications center well before the team has boots on the ground. 

The communications center is the logistical hub for transport and home to a bevy of communications specialists, often the unseen and unsung heroes of Teddy Bear Transport. These specialists are responsible for answering calls from referring centers, determining the best mode of transportation based on the patient’s location and acuity, dispatching the transport team and deciding where in the hospital the patient needs to be admitted.

As for air transports, none of them would be possible without skilled pilots. Melissa Irving says Teddy Bear Transport has the best.

“They would never go if the weather was not safe,” Irving said when asked if she had ever experienced a harrowing flight during her time with the service. “Our pilots wouldn’t fly if there was any issue with the helicopter or plane and wouldn’t land if it wasn’t safe. We didn’t ever have to think about our safety because we always had 100% faith in our pilots.”

The next 40 years for Teddy Bear Transport are likely to bring the same growth as the last 40 as the service continues to rise to ensure that all children in the area and beyond have access to the health care resources they need. 

“Cook has become a premier location for many specialty procedures and we have been traveling all over the U.S. to bring those children to the Medical Center,” Putman said. “The health system will continue to get bigger and better and in turn bring many opportunities to the transport team.”

Celebrate Good Times

Teddy Bear Transport will hold a 40th-anniversary celebration for all past and current transport employees on Thursday, Oct. 20, with an open house at its Meacham hanger from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., followed by a party at another local venue.

It’s hard to imagine how a stroke could be a blessing in disguise, but Joseph and Allison Turner believe it was for their son, Owen, when he was just 8 months old.

“The stroke caused all kinds of battles that we’re still battling today, eight years later, but it saved his life,” Turner said.

When Joseph noticed Owen wasn’t moving the right side of his body while playing with his baby on a Sunday morning in January 2014, he and Allison knew something was terribly wrong. In addition to the loss of movement, their otherwise happy and content baby was fussy and irritable. He was suddenly behaving differently than he had been just a few days earlier when Allison took Owen to his pediatrician to check out a few bumps that appeared on the top of his head. Initially thought to be cysts, the doctor scheduled Owen for a return visit the following Monday to have them rechecked. But the changes they saw in Owen that Sunday morning led them to rush to the nearest emergency room in Cleburne, Texas, just one day before their scheduled follow-up appointment with Owen’s pediatrician.

Things moved quickly at the ER. It was apparent to doctors there that Owen’s condition warranted a more specialized level of pediatric care than could be given at their hometown hospital, so doctors called a helicopter ambulance to transport Owen to Cook Children’s Medical Center. Joseph wanted to be at Cook Children’s as soon as the helicopter landed with his son, so he jumped in his truck to make the 30-minute drive to Fort Worth. Allison stayed behind with Owen to travel in the helicopter with him.

As they were waiting for the air transport doctors were simultaneously running a number of tests to try and determine the cause of his stroke and interrupt further damage as quickly as possible. A diagnosis came quickly, and it was beyond belief for Allison—acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing blood cancer that worsens quickly if not treated.

“Absolutely not,” Allison said describing her initial reaction. “There must be something else. It can’t be. This is my perfectly healthy baby.”

But Owen was critically ill. Abnormal leukemia cells were quickly building up in his blood and crowding out normal cells, which Allison says thickened his blood and led to the stroke. The bumps that appeared days before turned out to be clusters of leukemia cells sitting on top of his head. Had the stroke not prompted the Turners to take Owen to the ER, doctors told the family he may not have lived to make it to his scheduled doctor’s appointment the next day.

Allison rode with Owen in the helicopter to Cook Children’s in shock. Their lives had just changed forever, but there was no time to dwell on their disbelief. At Cook Children’s, Owen was immediately admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and met by Kenneth Heym, M.D., a pediatric oncologist and medical director of Cook Children’s oncology program. Dr. Heym wasted no time treating Owen’s cancer. That very Sunday night, the Turner’s baby boy began his first round of chemotherapy.

For the next four months, Cook Children’s was the family’s home while Owen underwent chemotherapy treatment. They left twice, but only to stay a few days just down the road from the hospital at Ronald McDonald House Fort Worth. After completing the intense AML treatment protocol, Owen was discharged from Cook Children’s in May 2014 and returned home for the first time in months.

In a matter of days, Allison and Joseph went from knowing little to nothing about AML to becoming experts on the topic. They credit their relationships with other cancer families at Cook Children’s for learning the ropes. Allison recalls that Cook Children’s chaplains would often stop by for a visit with Owen, and she would sometimes take that opportunity to step out and visit with other moms on the unit.

“Talk to the other cancer families if you're on the cancer floor,” Allison said about the advice she gives to families facing a new cancer diagnosis. “Those people were our family. We still send Christmas cards every year to the families that were inpatient while we were inpatient. They were such a support system. They share in something that nobody else on the outside would ever understand. Meet, find and talk to other cancer moms and cancer families that are going through the same thing.”

Today, 9-year-old Owen is cancer free and loving life, despite having a few lingering issues as a result of the stroke, like weakness on the right side of his body for which he continues weekly therapy. The stroke also led to daily seizures. In 2018, Owen became the first patient at Cook Children’s to undergo a trailblazing endoscopic surgery that disconnects part of his brain to stop seizures.

Even with these challenges, Allison says her son is a happy, easy-going kid looking forward to a future full of possibilities. If Owen has anything to do with it, that future will include lots of golfing and fishing, scoring a few goals for his soccer team, and cheering on Dude Perfect as they attempt their epic stunts.

About AML

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is a fast-growing blood cancer that originates in the bone marrow where blood cells are made. It starts with the abnormal growth of cells that form white blood cells, red blood cells or platelets. The abnormal cells end up crowding out normal blood cells, which can lead to infection, anemia and a tendency to bleed easily.

Of the more than 10,000 children diagnosed with cancer each year, nearly one in three cases are a form of leukemia. There are two main types of acute leukemia, with AML being the least common one in children.

Symptoms may be hard to spot. In Owen Turner's case, his symptoms began with bumps on the top of his head and escalated quickly resulting in a stroke. 

Other symptoms may include:

●     Easily tires, is weak or dizzy

●     Pale or ashen skin

●     Shortness of breath, trouble breathing or an unexplained cough

●     A fever or infection that doesn't get better

●     Bleeds or bruises easily, the gums may bleed often when brushing the teeth, recurrent nosebleeds

●     Continual bone or joint pain

●     A swollen belly

●     Swollen lymph nodes on the sides of the neck, underarms or groin area

●     Headaches, seizures, vomiting

●    Non-itchy rashes caused by bleeding under the skin

Acute myeloid leukemia is aggressive. It can move into other parts of the body and, if left untreated, can lead to death within six months or less.

If your child experiences any of the above symptoms, it is wise to talk with your pediatrician about them.

This verification means Cook Children’s has the best possible system in place for surgery in children. From our Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Level II Trauma Center, state of the art equipment and surgery rooms to advanced training in pediatric subspecialties, Cook Children’s has invested everything it takes to make its medical center in downtown Fort Worth, Texas the preeminent place for pediatric surgery.

“This recognition means families can be assured their children are in the best possible hands when they turn to Cook Children’s for surgical care,” said Eric Hubli, M.D., FACS, medical director of Children’s Surgery at Cook Children’s. “We are proud of the incredible surgical staff who work tirelessly to make Cook Children’s the best possible place to heal, and of our leadership team who continuously invests in us because they know every child’s life is sacred.”

To put this recognition in perspective, there are more than 200 children’s hospitals in the United States. Cook Children’s is one of an elite group of 22 that holds the distinction of being a Level I Children’s Surgery Center.

“Kids are not small adults,” said Dr. Hubli. “They have unique diseases and medical issues that can only be treated by specially-trained professionals.”

Cook Children’s has certified physicians and nurses in pediatric surgery and anesthesia available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, Cook Children’s Teddy Bear Transport team is dedicated to getting the most medically fragile children and neonates, often in need of surgery, to our award-winning medical center quickly and safely. All of this is part of the essential criteria that was observed and evaluated by the American College of Surgeons, leading to the verification as a Level I Children’s Surgery Center.

To read Cook Children's press release on the Level I Children’s Surgery Center verification, click here. 

Critically Ill Babies Arrive at Cook Children's in Wake of Hurricane Harvey

We were on hand as our Teddy Bear Transport Team brought critically ill babies from Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, to our Cook Children's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Click here to see our Transport team in action. 

A Call To Faith: Surviving Hurricane Harvey

Lily Faith was born at 23 weeks, 5 days and weighed 1 pound, 5 ounces. With Hurricane Harvey on its way, Lily was one of the fragile babies transferred to Cook Children's. We talked to Lily Faith's mom and learned this family's amazing story. Click to read. 

'I Don't Think I've Ever Been Tested More as a Nurse'

While our Teddy Bear Transport Team took babies away from the hurricane and to safety, we found stories of brave Cook Children's employees who were making their way into the storm to help. Candace Wilson saw plenty of tough situations as a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit nurse, but nothing compared to the havoc she witnessed while trying to evacuate a nursing home from the rising flood waters of Hurricane Harvey. Click to read Candace's story.

The Rescuers: Cook Children's Nurse, Dispatcher Help Hurricane Victims

We will never forget meeting Collin Main and Trent Palmer. We learned about the two Cook Children's employees after seeing a picture of Collin on a helicopter, taken by CBS National News. With their medical training and their boat, they knew they had the skills to help. Read their remarkable story of rescue by clicking here.

Along with our coverage on Checkupnewsroom.com, media from across the country covered our stories. Click the links below to revisit them:

•  Huge hurricane rips into Lone Star State: Hospitals evacuate most at-risk (Boston Herald)
• A Nurse on Rescuing Critically Ill Babies From Hurricane Harvey (New York Magazine)
• 'It's a Miracle': Some of Harvey's First Evacuees Were Newborns, Flown To Fort Worth (KERA)

"I would hear that song 'I'll be home for Christmas' in my head, and I'm like, 'I'm not going to be home,'" said mother, Carol Vallecalle.

It was a tough notion for Vallecalle to accept, but not as tough, she says, as what her 6-week-old daughter Ella has been through.

See the full story here.

“And then he had the audacity to tell me his favorite superhero was Superman!”

No, this is no comic book. This is the life of Captain Mike Dall, one of the jet pilots for Cook Children’s Teddy Bear Transport.

For 11 years, Dall has piloted the Cessna Citation Encore+jet. He’s had many memorable flights throughout his career, but on two of those occasions in the past couple of years he’s flown in a full Captain America suit, including a red, white and blue shield made from his trash can.

“It wasn’t anything premeditated,” Dall said while talking about the decision to wear the suit. “One Halloween, my kids wanted to go as superheroes. They asked me to join them. I made the shield and went with the kids. I thought, ‘I have the suit and if my kids liked it, maybe the patients might like it too.”

Dall remembers telling the medical crew on Teddy Bear Transport about the suit. He asks them to access the situation and see if it was right for the suit. Preemies are too young and older kids “would just think it’s weird.” But kids between the ages of 5 and 9 years old might think it’s cool.

Finally, the opportunity arrives. Dall said the patient looks at him as if the real Captain America is here and going to take care of him.

“The main reason I did it was because I saw the joy on my kids face when I wore the suit,” Dall said. “As a child all you want to do is go play with your friends and have fun. Now, you are a child and you’re sick cooped up in a hospital, maybe you’ve never flown before, it might be dark outside and you are afraid. I just thought what if you can add one thing that’s familiar to them or maybe even something that’s epic, it might make them forget about all that other stuff. It led me to think, ‘Yeah, I’m going to do this. Even if it embarrasses my coworkers.’”

And even as the child’s eyes brighten at the site of Cap showing up on the scene, he lets Dall know he wishes he was Superman.

“Really kid?” Dall laughs. “But I thought it was hilarious. Kids are just so honest. It was great.”

Dall says it’s hard to bring the suit out more than occasionally. Along with the right age, the situation can’t be too somber. Plus, the suit is really hot. But with the fall coming, Dall says the time may be right for Captain America to show back up.

While he may not be a true comic book superhero, Dall does share a military background with the fictional Steve Rogers’ alter ego and he is the captain of the flight crew. He flies about 60 times a year and goes throughout the state of Texas and has flown as far as Pittsburgh.

Dall grew up a military brat, living everywhere from Germany to Kansas.

He went to flight school in 2000, moved to Texas, married and became a flight instructor for about four years. After a deployment to Iraq as a member of the National Guard, Dall returned home. Now with children and needing a steady job, Dall opted not to follow the career path of most of his friends –working at an airline – and instead went to Cook Children’s to be a part of the air medical team of Teddy Bear Transport.

"Mike brings an amazing energy to our program," said Deborah Boudreaux, director of Teddy Bear Transport. "I am always happy to see him when I get to work. His passion and commitment to our patients and team is humbling. I'm so very happy to have him on my team."

Dall is employed by Metro Aviation, which operates the aircraft at Cook Children’s and is one of 16 pilots on staff. The transport fleet includes a:

• Cessna Citation+jet*
• King Air B200 critical care transport airplane*
• American Eurocopter 145 helicopter*

With the pilots and the transport team all working together at Meacham Field in Fort Worth, Dall says he feels like a part of the team and there is a special bond between the pilots and the Cook Children’s transport team.

“It’s such a great feeling to know you are doing something important and something good for someone,” Dall said. “It’s really cool to be able to provide that service for somebody. We might go from sitting around all day to all the sudden, we need to go pick up a patient. Sometimes I don’t even go into the hospital, depending on the situation. I wait at the plane. But when I have go in, it’s so cool to see the sense of relief from the hospital staff we travel to and the patient families when the blue suits arrive and they take over. It’s awesome to watch.”

Heck, they may be better than even Superman.

*Aircraft operated by Metro Aviation, Shreveport, Louisiana.

So Collin never expected a national correspondent from CBS News to be on a helicopter with him during the rescue of a 93-year-old woman from the perils of Hurricane Harvey in Port Arthur, Texas.

Omar Villafranca was on that helicopter and captured the rescue, naming Main in one of his tweets and showing him in his evening news report on the dangerous flooding.

“My cousin texted me and said, “I just watched the CBS Evening News and you were on it,” Main said while laughing. “I saw him (Villafranca), but I didn’t realize he was a reporter at first until we started talking. I never thought much about it.”

Main, who is a registered nurse in the Emergency Department at Cook Children’s, never thought much about helping people either after he saw the devastation of the hurricane.

“I feel like we did a lot of good, but I don’t necessarily feel like we did anything special,” Main said. “We were just doing what we were called to do. You don’t go into the medical field without having the call to help people.”

That call tugged at Main as he listened to Zello, a Walkie Talkie App, where he could hear the need for medical help and people with boats.

“I listened all day and it was just pulling at my heart,” he said. “They were pulling out babies and old people. I had to do something.”

Main called his fishing buddy Trent Palmer, who is a dispatcher at Cook Children’s Teddy Bear Transport and a paramedic. Main asked Palmer if they could take his aluminum flat water boat and head to Houston to help with the hurricane.

At first Palmer said no. After all, it was his expensive fishing boat that they would take to South Texas. But like Main, that calling to help tugged at him too.

"I said, 'Man, I don't want to run over a fire hydrant and sink. We would have to be the first ones rescued,'" Palmer said. "Collin told me to download this walkie-talkie rescue channel. I kept hearing call after call. People stranded in their attics or up on a roof. It just didn't sit well with me. I called Collin back and said, "The boat is hooked up to the truck, get here as soon as you can. Let’s go.”

They took another friend who is a physical therapist and headed toward Houston at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 29.

They listened to the app the whole trip. After a couple of hours, they realized that Houston was covered and it was Port Arthur that needed help the most. The three friends called until they reached a dispatcher in Port Arthur who gave them directions to a local mall, a place high enough that they could dock their boat and begin their rescue mission.

When they reached Port Arthur at around 5 a.m. Wednesday, they were shocked at what they saw, or to be more accurate – what they didn’t see.

Other than the Coast Guard, they were the first boat on the scene. They talked to a dispatcher to prioritize medical calls and headed out on the water. Within 5 minutes, they brought 15 people on their boat to safety.

For the next 12 hours, the three men lived the adventure of a lifetime:

They rescued a woman that Main estimated to be in her 80s. She was using a walker to help her stand in water up to her knees. She had been standing for 12 hours. When she saw Main, she sobbed from relief.

One family proved to be especially meaningful to Main. He volunteers at Camp Sanguinity, a camp for patients with cancer and blood disorders. The dispatcher said a child in the family had cancer and had a port. When Main and his physical therapist friend reached the house, they found six kids and a couple of adults. Main put one child on his back and carried the young child with cancer. Main wrapped his poncho on the child to protect the port.

At times, Main walked in waist-deep water to go to a house, while Palmer drove people to land in his boat. In most of the houses, the electricity was still on and power lines were on the ground. Main even commandeered a Jon Boat he saw floating by to carry someone to safety.

But for all the people helped, none were more dramatic than the one captured by CBS Evening News.

The trio received a call about a 93-year old woman who had suffered a seizure and was experiencing chest pains. Palmer drove the boat as far as he could, but the water became too shallow and Main jumped out to walk.

He saw a young boy riding by on a Jet Ski. Main asked him for help. He hopped on the back of the Jet Ski and used his phone for directions. When Main arrived, he found the woman with water up to the mattress on her bed. She couldn’t walk or stand and was not physically able to ride back on the Jet Ski. She was in immediate need of help and beyond what Main could offer her with limited supplies.

Main walked out and saw Navy rescue helicopters hovering above like bees. He took off his white hat and waved it frantically to get the crew’s attention.

The lady was carried out, placed on a basket and lifted up to the helicopter. They asked Main what he did for a living and since he was a nurse, they brought him along for medical support.

But the adventure didn’t stop there. Once the woman was safe, Main still had to get back to his friends who were about six miles away.

He walked out of the airport where the helicopter landed and hitchhiked to the highway. From there he flagged down a dump truck that was headed to the mall.

“It was the wildest day of my life,” Main said.

From sunrise to about 8 p.m. that evening, the three men from North Texas made multiple trips and were involved in rescuing more than 100 people. By the end of the day, dozens of boats had arrived. The Army and Coast Guard took over by the evening and it was time to go home.

"It was a real humbling experience," Palmer said. "Everybody was so grateful. I saw stuff I never wanted to see and I saw stuff that was really amazing. We did have some pretty scary moments, but it was nothing compared to what was going on around us. We weren't worried about ourselves."

They drove back and went nearly 48 hours without sleep. Palmer returned to work, with someone else who needed to be rescued -- Harvey, a dog they saw that was wandering around without an owner.

"He's as skinny as could be," Palmer said. "But we brought him home. He's sitting right next to me. I have him now."

Thursday night and Main was up after only 5 hours of sleep to take care of the animals that live on the farm.

“It was such a terrible situation. I’ve never seen anything like it and hope I never do again,” Main said. “The look of loss and despair on people’s faces… it will stay with me forever. People were crying. Some did not want to leave their house. Everything was a total loss. We tried to be encouraging. We told them they were safe. You can replace this stuff. But, it was hard on people. They would be in waist-deep water and they didn’t want to leave.”

And yet through it all, the three friends found moments of joy.

“We were able to laugh. We had a boat full of people and we were going by a Dairy Queen,” Main said. “It looked open except for all the water around it. The lights were on and the Drive Through sign was lit up. I said, “Palmer, pull over and get us all some Blizzards. We all started laughing. All of these people who had gone through so much started laughing. This was without question, one of the craziest things I’ve ever been through in my life. But I never felt like I was in danger. I’m sure I was. I’m sure we all were. But my granddad, he was always my hero. He taught me to help people. We all feel fortunate that we were able to help. I know this. I would do it all again and wouldn’t think twice about it.”

His grandfather would be proud.

*Top photo, credited to Omar Villafranca/CBS News

**All other photos, video credited to Trent Palmer

A phone call at 11:30 a.m. Thursday from Driscoll’s hospital chief to the head of Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth kicked off a frantic, 17-hour race to get the smallest and sickest patients to safety before the massive, Category 4 hurricane slammed into the Lone Star State, Cook Children’s Transport Director Debbie Boudreaux told the Herald yesterday.

Read the full story here.

Debbie Boudreaux, director of the transportation team and a neonatal nurse at Cook Children’s, sprang into action, scrambling to get planes to transport the infants 400 miles north to Fort Worth. (With one exception, their parents would have to drive separately.)

Read the entire story here. 

KERA

Read how Cook Children's Teddy Bear Transport Team answered the call for help and moved the babies out of harm's way.

Clark couldn’t resist. Just like all the times she’s spent playing with some of the long-term ventilated patient population, actually getting on the floor mats along with the children. She says this helps keep her grounded in Cook Children’s nursing philosophy of caring.

It’s that attitude that helps someone like Clark stand out and be named as one of the 2015 DFW Great 100 Nurses, sponsored by DFW Great 100 Nurses Inc.

Clark was one of four Cook Children’s nurses named to the DFW Great 100, along with Melissa Irving, Bernadette Kelly and Elizabeth Leper.

The nurses were chosen based on the following categories - role model, leadership qualities, service to the community, compassionate caregiver and significant contributions.

Here’s a glimpse of the nomination letters sent on behalf of the recipients:

Melissa Irving, Teddy Bear Transport, Neonatal Transport Nurse

Melissa has been a member of the Teddy Bear Transport team since1985. Melissa was one of the first team members; she set the standard for the qualities that we look for in our nurses today: compassion, leadership, critical thinking, and stewardship. Being a transport nurse is not exactly the same as being a bed side nurse. You play many different roles, as the team is comprised of a nurse, RT and a paramedic. You have to be able to assess and relay the information to the accepting physicians without hesitation. Melissa is an excellent teacher and often provides her expertise to the referring staff to help with the care they provide prior to our arrival …

Melissa leaves a lasting impression on her patients. She becomes that beacon of hope for those she cares for; it could be the gentle voice or the assuring touch and the ever-present smile. She has consistently received cards and emails from the families that she has cared for over the past 30 years; she just connects with people …

Melissa is such a compassionate caregiver; she has an amazing affinity to calm those around her. She cares for the entire team, the referring staff as well as her patients. She treats every child as if they were her very own; it is her calling to provide the best care.

Bernadette Kelly, Cardiac Intensive Care Unit Nurse Manager

Recently the CICU cared for a patient (baby) whose mother never left the bedside. The patient was constantly fussy and crying secondary to his diagnosis. This family had been on the unit for a few weeks and was noted to have no additional family support and difficulty communicating with staff as English was their second spoken language.

(Kelly) was a resource nurse that day and did not have a patient assignment. She noticed the mom looked exhausted and took this as a time to discuss self-care. It was around 4 p.m. when she asked the mother if she had eaten. She said, “No, I can’t leave because he will cry if I put him down.”

(Kelly) knew due to his defect he could not cry for long periods without having status changes. This nominee volunteered to take the baby and he immediately went to sleep with her rocking him. Once his mother noticed her compassion toward her ill infant she left to go eat. When she came back, (Kelly) encouraged her to lie down and that she would still be available to hold him. Caregiver fatigue is often seen in parents that care for ill children. (Kelly) provided education to a mother with minimal family support about the importance of her eating and resting while her son was in the ICU. This young mother was so grateful for the time this nominee spent holding her baby so she could take care of herself. (Kelly’s) compassion for pediatric cardiac patients has been at the forefront of her career and secondary to her skill set, compassion and empathy, she was the PICU Employee of the Year in 2012.

Elizabeth Leeper, Perioperative Services Nurse Manager

(Leeper) is a compassionate caregiver to patients, families and staff. This nurse follows our philosophy of being a patient advocate and promoting a culture of serving others with respect for individuality and diversity. I have seen her make allowances for special needs patients collaborating with anesthesia and nurses.

For example, we have older autistic children that have extreme separation anxiety making it difficult for a nurse to push them back on a hospital bed to surgery. This nurse will step up and make special provisions for a parent to go back to the OR with the patient until they are asleep. This consideration promotes the organizations promise of a save environment for our patients and families. This candidate is very caring to staff in times of family emergencies, personal problems and need for time away from work.

Her kindness and concern for her staff make you feel you are a family member of hers. I have seen her cry and comfort her colleagues during times of lost loved ones, sick or injured children or spouse or simply having a bad day. I was stuck in Houston when my loved one was having surgery and we had to stay longer due to complications. Not only did she empathize and console me but helped me cover my shifts so I could stay and look after my loved one and not worry about my job.

Teresa Clark, Chief Nursing Officer

This nurse has been a role model for those around her for three decades. At our institution alone, she has practiced and offered sound leadership for over 25 years. She has both an advanced certification and a master’s degree. From my own conversations with this nurse, I know that she has always felt called to our profession … this calling is not something you can teach ...

While this candidate has a long history in nursing and one that illustrates her wonderful work, this past year’s contributions are remarkable. She was promoted to CNO following the retirement of a long tenured CNO. She demonstrated her strength as she held together a large nursing staff – encouraging teamwork, professionalism and collaboration during this change in leadership. She led efforts to finalize and implement a new professional development program, restructured our nursing org chart and updated our nursing practice model and nursing strategic plan. She has accomplished all of this while enrolled in her DNP program and battling metastatic breast cancer.

Still, I think her most significant contribution is her caring … which is really the defining characteristic of our profession. She cares about the children in our community, the staff she leads, the organization she works for and the profession she was called to serve.

This Great 100 nominee displays such dedication to our profession of healing hands and caring hearts that inspires me even today.

That’s why the addition of a new Cessna Citation Encore + jet will make the team, already one of the largest transport programs in the nation, even better.

The new aircraft is special, providing its crew shorter travel times, a greater reach and more efficiently placed equipment to get critical need patients to Cook Children’s faster.

The new jet, made possible by a generous gift from Clarabele "Pit" Dodson, also provides capacity for two parents to be transported with the patient, if needed. The current plane only has room for one.

And the new jet can get to these patients faster than ever before. Transport will shave an entire hour off round trip when traveling to Odessa. The flight will take 45 minutes each way.

Plus, this new plane can travel nearly 1,400 miles farther in a day than the previous plane because it doesn’t have to refuel as often. Without the delay to get fuel, Transport will not be as restricted due to pilot duty time either (they have a maximum number of flying hours per day).

With nearly 2,500 transports each year, Cook Children’s Teddy Bear Transport is plenty busy and will make full use of its fleet of five ambulances, one fixed-wing airplane, a jet and one helicopter.

But the Teddy Bear Transport is about more than just getting to the patients. It’s the care that takes place once the team arrives that makes them really stand out. Currently, the transport team includes 54 pediatric nurses, respiratory therapists, paramedics and communications specialists with more than 400 combined years of experience.

“It’s not just the jet that can get to these kids faster. It’s Cook Children’s that can get to these kids faster,” Deborah Boudreaux, director of Transport said. “We are bringing the expertise of our care to our patients as soon as we walk through that door. I can now relay that information to the physician sooner and we can begin care at that moment.”