Cheryl Eaddy, who has retired from nursing after a 32-year career, always tried to take care of the "whole patient," going above and beyond in her role. | Pexels/Rodnae Productions
Cheryl Eaddy, who has retired from nursing after a 32-year career, always tried to take care of the "whole patient," going above and beyond in her role. | Pexels/Rodnae Productions
Cheryl Eaddy, a recently retired nurse at Novant Health Thomasville Medical Center, reflected on her more than three decades of helping patients in their most vulnerable moments.
The hospital was like a second home, Eaddy told Fox 8 News. “It was family. It was my second family, and sometimes it was my first family.”
She said she always knew what to do for her patients but was taken aback when she got a diagnosis of breast cancer herself. Her faith in God helped her through her own health crisis, she said. In the last 10 years of being cancer-free, she was able to truly understand what her patients were going through.
“(Faith) carried me through when I was diagnosed with breast cancer because I knew what to do for my patients, but I didn’t know what to do with the diagnosis for me,” she told Fox 8 News. “I placed it in God’s hands, and he just guided me through it.”
Eaddy's own mother was the first African-American to graduate from the then-Davidson County Community College nursing program in 1972.
At a retirement party Feb. 22, Eaddy’s coworkers gave her gifts, including a collection of photos and a charm bracelet inscribed with the dates she worked at the hospital.
“If I don’t see some of them again, I’ve got great memories of them, and that’s a treasure,” Eaddy said, according to Fox 8 News.
Eaddy tells everyone she encounters to get a health screening, including a mammogram and colonoscopy, at the appropriate age.
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