San Luis Obispo nurse Elissa Molfino is used to taking care of her patients.
Her patients’ pets, not so much.
But that’s exactly what she volunteered to do after a Cambria man who’d suffered a bad fall showed up at the hospital in late October.
As a result, Molfino can now add crisis dog rescuer to her resume.
“I am beyond blessed and grateful for Elissa and her family and how they solved my dilemma,” patient Michael Walsh, 79, told The Tribune after suffering a concussion and retrograde amnesia from a tumble down the stairs in late October. “OMG, this was the kindest gesture I have ever received! I was beyond grateful, and so was my boy.”
That boy is the dog he describes as his “8-year-old, faithful companion golden retriever Rebel,” who, until Molfino stepped up, had nowhere to go after accompanying his owner to French Hospital Medical Center in San Luis Obispo..
Cambria man doesn’t remember fall down stairs
As Walsh remembers it, he drove himself to the hospital for what he had expected to be a quick ER visit for X-rays or tests to determine if he’d injured himself when he fell down a flight of nine stairs.
Because nobody else was home, Walsh took Rebel with him to San Luis Obispo.
Walsh isn’t exactly sure what had happened, he told The Tribune in a series of phone and email interviews,but as nearly as he can recreate it, he’d arisen about 6:30 a.m., gone downstairs and then back up to start his day. He remembers picking up a report from his desk downstairs … and then waking up at about 8 a.m., “finding myself scrunched against the wall at the bottom of the stairs,” with his report, his reading glasses and cellphone on the landing about eight steps above.
“When I tried to stand up, it became clear that I had fallen and was in some pain,” he said, but he had “no recollection of climbing the stairs, feeling faint” or having what doctors and first responders call a “syncopal episode,” or a sudden fall.
Walsh has polyneuropathy due to Type 2 diabetes, he said, which gives him “balance issues, so I am very careful on my stairs, always using the handrails and have never tripped or fallen” during his 23 years there.
“After crawling up the stairs with Rebel,” he said, “I realized that my head would not move up and down or sideways, and the left side of my head was swollen, and the pain was at least an eight on the scale from one to 10.”
What happened next, Walsh said, “is very telling about a stubborn Irish-American male, former firefighter and EMT” (emergency medical technician).
He took two Tylenol and went to bed, with trusty, worried Rebel beside him.
“Did I call a neighbor, a friend, Cambria Anonymous Neighbors, the Cambria Fire Department or 911?” Walsh asked rhetorically. “What do you think?”
He didn’t sleep, because “of my obvious head injury,” he said, but stayed still, “hoping that the pain would subside.”
It didn’t. And when he awoke on Oct. 24, the pain in his head and body was worse.
“Why did I wait a day?” he said, “Pretty stupid, when I realized the mechanism of my injuries from falling down nine stairs was serious. I should have my head examined … oh wait, that came later!”
After a practice drive around Cambria, the still-in-pain Walsh and Rebel headed for French Hospital’s ER.
Nurse recruits family to help
Fast forward about six hours, and the doctors’ initial analysis of Walsh’s condition made them much too concerned to let him go home, let alone drive himself there.
That meant Rebel would continue to be stuck in the hospital parking lot in Walsh’s 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee, with plenty of water, food, toys and plenty of air through the vehicle’s open windows, but leaving a worried Walsh in the ER with no apparent options in sight.
(Rebel could visit his owner in the ER, the nurse said, but because the private rooms that are currently under construction at the hospital aren’t yet ready to occupy, dogs aren’t allowed in the patient rooms that house two or more people.)
Molfino, who’s been at French for 10 years, had started her shift that day as a triage nurse in the ER. She did Walsh’s intake interview, collecting initial data for the attending physician and coordinating all the tests the doctor wanted performed.
“We were very busy,” she said, “so it took a long time for the specialists, X-ray and other services to get there.”
Later in her workday, she switched to being a floor nurse, which put her back on Walsh’s case again.
When he became so agitated and determined to care for Rebel that he signed himself out of the hospital against the physician’s advice, Molfino regretfully wheeled Walsh out to his vehicle, as protocol requires.
However, when her patient tried to get out of the wheelchair, she said, “it quickly became apparent that it wouldn’t be safe for him to drive.”
Thinking quickly, she said, “I talked him into coming back inside by telling him that I’d take care of the dog,” which she described later as being the “sweetest old golden retriever, the cutest dog, the easiest dog to dog-sit.”
As a nurse who works long shifts, she needed to enlist some help. Fortunately, the Molfino home is close to the hospital.
She explained Walsh’s predicament to her kids (Gwen Molfino, 16, and Gabe Molfino, 14), plus her lifelong friend and current roommate Carly Johnson.
There was no hesitation
“Carly and the kids immediately came over and got to know Rebel and Mike,” Elissa Molfino said. “They hung out in the ER room with the dog and Mike for a while, trying to make him feel a little more comfortable” about the solution they were proposing for Rebel.
They would keep the dog at their house until Walsh could go home.
Walsh recalls the meet-and-greet session as being a “mutual love fest” and expressed his gratitude repeatedly.
“His whole thing was about his dog,” Molfino said. “Rebel is his whole world. He even has a ‘who rescued who?’ bumper sticker on the back of his car.”
Then Molfino took Walsh back out to his car briefly. He said, “I gave them some food, snacks and toys I had brought” for the dog “and off Rebel went with tail a wagging, so happy to be with Carly, Gabe and Gwen.”
“We kept him for a couple of days,” until Walsh was discharged on Oct. 26, the nurse said, and by that time, the whole family, including their labradoodle, were smitten with Rebel.
“When I went to work the next day,” Molfino said, “I let Mike know his dog was doing fine.”
Johnson said in a Nov. 22 email that “I honestly wasn’t surprised when Elissa called me because that’s exactly something she would do and has done. We’ve been friends since we were two (at least as good of friends as a toddlers can be), and Elissa has wanted to be a nurse since she was five. She goes above and beyond for her patients, and for her friends and family. We both believe that if we can help then we will do everything we can to do so.
Plus, she added, “Rebel made it a joy to help! He’s an adorable, good-natured Golden Retriever, and was a delightful house guest.”
How Walsh is doing now
Walsh said on Tuesday that “the external pain has subsided. For now, it appears that the left side of my head took the brunt of the trauma, from by my ear to the back of my head. It’s been hurting a lot, but yesterday, it started to subside. I’ve started to see there might be a light at the end of that proverbial tunnel.”
His voice is stronger and his speech is much more understandable than it was after the fall.
Still, “I can’t concentrate or focus very well,” he said, “because I have acute, short-term memory loss.”
“I watch TV,” Walsh said, but “I couldn’t even tell you what the plot was 10 minutes later.”
He was expecting an update call from his physician that day. After that, Walsh doesn’t know what to expect, “maybe another PET scan or MRI.”
Meanwhile, a rotating group of friends takes turns walking Rebel, and Walsh has ordered a GPS watch that will notify first responders if he should fall again. “For a doofus like me, it’s probably smart,” he said with a laugh.
Nurse is ‘typical of our staff’
“To me, it was very simple, something other nurses have done and would do again,” Molfino said. “Mike is so sweet. I’m so glad it blessed him and made such an impression on him. But I’m hesitant to be considered a hero. Most of my coworkers would have done the same thing.”
Sara San Juan, spokesperson for Dignity Health, agreed. What Molfino did was exceptional, she said, yet “so typical of our staff. They’re so giving, so kind, such caretakers.”
In fact, she said that Molfino’s actions that day might not have been that unusual, because staffers often go out of their way to help patients.
While there has been some very informal chatter about establishing a list of staffers willing to help in similar or related circumstances when they’re off duty, so far, there’s been no formal decision yet on if it’s doable.
“I’m aware of that idea,” San Juan said, but that’s all it is for now.
Molfino thinks that creating such a list could be a win-win for the hospital and its patients, “but I don’t want people coming in droves, thinking we have a dog shelter here, because we don’t.”
“I love my job, my coworkers, this hospital,” Walsh’s nurse said. “For me, I think it’s the best job in the world. We get to be there for people in those intense moments that matter, when somebody has no other options. We have a chance to have intimacy with people that we would never have otherwise. I love what I do … but I work with 20 other nurses who would do the same thing.”