This baby was all alone in the hospital. Her nurse adopted her and changed their lives.
"Who's this beautiful angel?" Those were the first words that Liz Smith, the director of Nursing at Franciscan Children's Hospital in Brighton, Massachusetts spoke to a blue-eyed baby she'd never met before. She was on her way to the elevator and expected to say nothing but a quick hello to a tiny hospital resident she didn't recognize.
The "beautiful angel," it turned out, was an eight-month-old named Gisele. She was a ward of the state, and she'd already spent more than five months at the hospital being treated for conditions stemming from a premature birth and her mother's drug use during pregnancy.
What was most heartbreaking was that Gisele had had no visitors during the entire time she'd been at the hospital, not even her parents, who were granted visitation, but weren't able to take advantage of it. And while social workers were trying to place her with a family, they'd been having some trouble.
As Smith drove home from the hospital that night, The Washington Post reports, all she could think of was Gisele.
The nursing director had always wanted to be a mother, but there had been complications ā including her insurance refusing to cover in vitro fertilization.
"I never imagined becoming a mum would be a challenge," she told WaPo. "It's a desire you can try to push away and fill with other distractions, but it never goes away." She'd never considered adoption, she said, but Gisele changed all that.
So Smith started making plans. She put in a request to foster Gisele. She sat in Gisele's room every day after work ensuring that the baby felt loved and cared for. And when Gisele turned 9 months old, she was allowed to come home with Smith.
It was a leap of faith, and one that came with uncertain conditions. The state had only allowed Smith to take Gisele home if she agreed that every effort would be made to reunite the child with her birth parents.
"I was excited but nervous, realising that I was committing everything I had to this child who might not be in my life forever," Smith said.
Despite that, she wanted to ensure that Gisele, who suffered from a myriad of health problems, could enjoy life outside of the hospital. For Smith, Gisele's health and happiness were all that mattered. Even if it meant that Gisele might not be her permanent child.
Even when it became clear that Gisele would be staying with Smith forever (or at least until she moves out for college), the news was bittersweet. While Smith was overjoyed that Gisele would be staying, she was also heartbroken for the baby's biological parents, whose parents rights had been terminated. All she wanted was for Gisele to have love in her life.
But today, she has that and more. The Smiths not only share a home and last name, but an unbreakable bond that has seen them through good times and the bad.
Though Gisele still struggles with her health, she's also gained weight and met every developmental milestone, growing into a loving, energetic child who loves nothing more than to burst into song.
This story is just more proof of something we all know: Having someone in your life who will care for you, root for you, and love you unconditionally can make all the difference. For Smith, that love is creating a future she'd long thought was only a dream.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
- YouTube youtube.com
Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
āBut the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?ā
āYou can just say you're a superhero.ā
āI would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!ā
āI would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.ā
āThis one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.ā
āI would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!ā
āEvery time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.ā
āKeep them. Tell people what to do. Theyāll do your bidding.ā
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.