Superman’s Super Nurse

As Christopher Reeve’s long-time head nurse, Dolly Arro has become a reluctant celebrity, dodging requests for television and press interviews. Often seen accompanying the quadriplegic actor in his campaign for stem cell research, Arro would rather stay on the sidelines and keep to herself.

In fact, it took her famous boss to convince her to grant her first media interview to Nurseweek, a California-based nursing magazine, and talk about her relationship with him.

"Just looking at Chris and Dana (Reeve’s wife) gives me courage," the Cauayan, Negros Occidental-born Arro tells Nurseweek’s Carol Lindsay, RN, a friend and colleague. "They are part of me. They put one foot in front of the other, breathe in and out and wake everyday hoping the next day will be better. I look at my own life and sometimes I complain, then I think of Chris," she says. "He can’t do things for himself, but he just keeps going and going."

"Dolly is worth her weight in gold," Reeve said of Arro in a recent TV documentary, "Courageous Steps," narrated by the Man of Steel himself and directed by his son Matthew. America’s nursing leaders regard Reeve’s praise of Arro as a tribute to the dedication and world-class skills of Filipino nurses.

A member of Class ’78 of the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Hospital School of Nursing in Bacolod City, Arro worked at a Philippine government hospital before immigrating to New York in 1985. For the next 10 years, she took further studies at Riverside College School of Nursing, worked as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse and occasionally took on part-time home health assignments–expe-riences she would later use as head of Reeve’s staff of two full-time RNs and a group of per diem nurses.

A green card holder, she is raising her only child, April Joy Arro-Isagan.

In 1995, a co-worker offered Arro a private home health assignment with a vent-dependent man battling a spinal cord injury from a horseback riding accident. Without knowing the patient‘s name, she accepted the job.

But before leaving to go to her new patient’s home, Arro called her co-worker to double-check the details of the assignment.

"Do you know who Superman is?" Arro quoted her friend as saying. Arro said she immediately knew who the patient was–the star of the famous super adventure movie, which was very popular even in the Philippines.

The first time she walked into Reeve’s house, Arro saw Dana fixing breakfast for the couple’s three-year-old son. Dana pointed to the room where her husband was with the nurse who was caring for him at the time.

"The first thing I saw were those blue eyes,"Arro recalls. "I thought to myself, ‘Those are pierceing blue eyes.’"

Arro spent three hours observing the nurse who was caring for Reeve. "My orientation included watching and filing information in my brain," she says. The nurse used a device called a coughalator, which Arro had never seen before. Having a background in ICU, her only experience with clearing secretions for ventilator patients was the use of wall sunction. This machine was different because it alternately applies positive then negative pressure to the patient’s airway to clear secretions. The process is repeated until the lungs are cleared.

"I practiced that over and over in my brain,"she says. "That was the extent of my orientation."

Two days later, with no hands-on training, Arro found herself alone caring for Reeve. "I still don’t know how I did it, or what possessed me to just go there and do it with no training," she relates. "I worried about something happening, but then I thought I will just use my critical care nursing skills. A patient is a patient."

Since Reeve is a patient with celebrity status, Arro has to take special precautions to respect his privacy. All of Reeve’s medical staff sign special confidentiality agreements. With or without agreements, Arro says she values the close relationship she has developed with the Reeve family during the last seven years.

"I clicked with Chris, Dana and the kids," says Arro, who is based in Westchester County, New York. "You are in their home everyday and you see things differently than in a clinical setting. You meet relatives and family and you have to work hard to respect the patient’s privacy.

"You blend into the family, but you are not family," she adds. "We are friends. However, I refrain from being too involved in what is going on, even though I am involved. It is their life and I have my life. There is a demarcation line. The dynamics are very intricate and we respect one another."

Reeve travels a great deal and where he goes, Arro goes. They have traveled to as many as eight states in a month. On day trips, Arro takes one nurse and two aides with her. On longer trips, she schedules additional staff. Traveling is not a problem for Arro; she enjoys it. "If Chris said, ‘Dolly, I am going to the moon,’ I would say, ‘When?’"

When Reeve and Dana joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the traditional New Year’s Day countdown on Times Square, Arro was there looking after her boss.

Arro admits she is happy that Reeve has access to the best technology. But she feels a sense of frustration that other quadriplegics do not have similar equipment because insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid will not approve funding.

But it is more than just his celebrity and financial advantage that keeps Arro in awe of Reeve’s progress. She believes that because Reeve is the first documented case of a quadriplegic who has exercised so intensely for so many years, he can serve as an example for quadriplegics with less tangible advantages.

Although Reeve failed in his promise that he would walk by his 50th birthday on Sept. 25, the actor has regained some sense of touch and the ability to move one of his fingers.

Reeve’s activism in the field of stem cell research has been highly publicized, and Arro has been at his side every step of the way.

Arro believes that because of Reeve and his celebrity status, public awareness of spinal injuries has grown and that his remarkable progress will compel non-believers to give stem cell research a chance.

And although she loves working with Reeve on his recovery, Arro says she dreams of the day she is fired from her job.

"I hope they call me very soon to say, ‘Chris can breathe and walk; you’re fired!’" she says with a wide smile.