A neonatal intensive care nurse at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and a preemie she cared for years prior had a surprise reunion when a new resident walked into her NICU and told her his name.
Vilma Wong had been working at the hospital for 32 years when a young doctor began his residency on her team. Seeing him standing by the incubators, she asked him who he was. When she heard his name — Brandon Seminatore — she knew he wasn’t just any doctor.
“His last name sounded very familiar,” she told the San Jose Mercury News. “I kept asking where he was from, and he told me that he was from San Jose, California, and that, as a matter of fact, he was a premature baby born at our hospital.
“I then got very suspicious because I remember being the primary nurse to a baby with the same last name,” she explained.
She told him that the baby she had cared for was born at 29 weeks, weighing just two pounds and six ounces in 1990, and that his father had been a member of the San Jose police department.
That’s when Seminatore noticed Wong’s name tag.
“There was a big silence, and then he asked me if I was Vilma,” Wong said. Seminatore’s parents had evidently spoken of Wong as he was growing up, telling him to never forget her name. He texted his parents, and his father sent him a photo of a nurse holding a newborn Seminatore on the day his feeding tube was removed — and the nurse was indeed Wong.
In an interview with ABC, Seminatore shared, “Meeting Vilma was a surreal experience. I never expected to meet a provider who took care of me when I was a baby.” He wanted to share the story because growing up hearing about how Wong and others took care of him, including nurse Kas Pilon, actually inspired him to work in pediatric medicine.
“They were the most wonderful nurses,’’ said his mother, Laura Seminatore. “They helped calm a lot of our fears.’’
“This story is for families with children who have had a rough start in life,” Seminatore said. “I want to give them hope.”
As for Wong, meeting a grownup Seminatore felt “kind of like [a] reward.”
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