A California nurse realized she had cared for a new coworker decades earlier.
Vilma Wong has worked at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford for more than 32 years.
In August, she met Brandon Seminatore, 28, who had joined her team.
Seminatore was a second-year pediatric resident completing a child neurology residency at Stanford University, the hospital said in a statement.
Nurse Vilma Wong and Doctor Brandon Seminatore pose for a photo together at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2018.
Wong said the resident’s last name felt familiar when she first asked him who he was.
“I asked who he was and his name, and last name sounded very familiar,” Wong said. “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.”
Her curiosity continued until she asked a different question.
“I asked him if his dad was a police officer,” she said. “And there was a big silence, and then he asked me if I was Vilma, I said yes.”
Seminatore’s mother had asked him to look for the nurse named Vilma who had cared for him as an infant.
Wong said she felt stunned and joyful to realize she had cared for him nearly 30 years earlier.
“I was in shock initially but overjoyed to know that I took care of him almost 30 years ago,” Wong said. “And now he’s as a pediatric resident to the same population he was part of.”
After Brandon told his parents about meeting his primary nurse, they sent him a photo.
His parents texted him a picture of Vilma holding him on her lap when he was a baby.
Seminatore said his parents had explained his early health struggles and why a nurse remained with him.
“I needed an incubator to keep me warm, a ventilator to help me breath, and had near endless pokes and prods to make sure I was healthy and growing appropriately,” Seminatore said in the statement. “Meeting Vilma was a surreal experience. I never expected to meet a provider who took care of me when I was a baby.”
The reunion connected a nurse and a former patient now caring for the same community.