National Nurses United

38 N A T I O N A L N U R S E W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G A P R I L | M AY | J U N E 2 0 2 0 Jeff Baumbach, RN jeff baumbach died Mar. 31, 2020 at Adventist Health Lodi Memorial Hospital. Baumbach had been exposed to COVID-19 at work and both he and his wife Karen became ill. Karen has since recovered. Baumbach was born in 1963, to Hank and Dixie Baumbach. He was the youngest of four siblings. He grew up in Lodi, where he met his future wife in high school. "He lived out in the country and they had a pool, and everyone just congregated at Jeff 's house," said Karen. While Karen finished her last year in high school, Baumbach took a job in the forestry, then began working as an EMT. "He was just a quick thinker and he liked the adrenaline rush of being an EMT and then he moved into being a paramedic," said Karen. "He really liked being a paramedic, but then we got married and we looked around and we didn't see any old guy paramedics really, so he ended up going back to school to get his AA degree in nursing." Nursing suited Baumbach. He worked for many years in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Dameron Hospital in Stockton. Karen said he enjoyed the autonomy of caring for patients recovering from open-heart surgery and working out complex patient care. "He was really smart that way, figuring all the things out, the meds the patients were on, and how they were going to affect their heart. The doctors really trusted his knowledge base," said Karen. "He really liked having the patient day after day and seeing who could get them up first and that kind of a thing." After 25 years as a bedside nurse, Baumbach transitioned to a position as a patient care coordinator developing discharge plans for Kaiser Permanente patients who were admitted to St. Joseph's Medical Center in his hometown. "Our job is very hard in case management," said coworker Shelley Chase, RN. "You have to tell people things that are difficult to hear. But he was able to do that in a way so they could hear it. He knew how to talk to people." Chase remembers Baumbach as an incredibly knowledgeable nurse who was a "phenomenal team player." "He always went the extra mile," she said. "He would take extra shifts, pitch in when we needed help, and try to ease that person's burden. He would help us think outside the box if there was a problem or an issue." Karen said for many years their lives were a blur of raising four children, working full time, juggling kids and "all the regular life stuff." Despite the demands of his domestic and work responsibilities, Baumbach went back to school and was able to complete his bachelor's degree in nursing in 2012. As Karen put it, "We were just multi-taskers." Chase said Baumbach loved to cook and she relished the treats he would bring to work. "On the weekend, the boys [in the department] would always wear a Hawaiian shirt, and you could listen to the boys talk about their BBQ and their rubs," reminisced Chase. "With such an estrogen group, it was nice to have the boys. But they weren't boys, they were seasoned gentlemen. That was the great thing. Jeff was a gentleman." Karen says her husband enjoyed gambling and was lucky at the blackjack table, he loved the San Francisco Giants, and was always ready for a travel adventure. The two always made sure there was money enough for a family trip, and they visited Lake Tahoe, Kauai, Alaska, and Disneyland. After the trips, Baumbach would buy jigsaw puzzles of the places they'd visited. Karen said he could complete a thousand-piece puzzle within two or three days. "He would paste them and put them on the walls of the garage, all over the ceiling," said Karen. Now some 20 completed jigsaws puzzles hang in the Baumbach's garage. They stand as a testament to a man who liked to solve complex problems and a father and husband who delighted in sharing the wonders of the world with his family. —Rachel Berger Paul Camagay, RN paul anthony camagay, rn, died on April 9 from COVID-19. He worked in the transitional care unit at Emanate Health in Covina, Calif. Unfortunately, we were unable to reach any of Camagay's coworkers or family for this article. —Staff report Karla Dominguez, RN registered nurse karla dominguez was a fierce advocate for "her kids" in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), from the moment they entered El Paso's Providence Children's Hospital, until In Memoriam Honoring our NNU members who died on the front lines of COVID-19

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