Six years ago, registered nurse Jessica Zajesky joined Ernie Rushin’s care team at Albany Med.
“Jessica shows big-time love,” Rushin said during a recent checkup. “I can laugh with her, I can joke with her, and that means a lot. It means a lot.”
The 73-year-old says the devotion of Zajesky and the other staff at the hospital’s division of HIV medicine is the main reason he’s been so satisfied with his care here since he was diagnosed in the mid-1990s.
“I love talking to Jessica because I can talk to her; she listens,” he said. “She’s never steered me wrong.”
“The relationships that I’ve built with the patients in this clinic is such a privilege; to be along with them, because you become like a family, like a surrogate family,” Zajesky said.
For Zejesky, who grew up in the Capital Region, treating HIV is literally a family affair. After a transfusion-gone-wrong, the disease claimed the life of her mother, Mary, 30 years ago.
“She was diagnosed on my 10th birthday and we got the news that day and then she passed when I was 14,” Zajesky said.
Zajesky says her mother’s battle and the care she received not only inspired her to become a nurse, but also impacts the way she treats each patient.
“I recall a couple instances where there were some less than stellar interactions with her physicians or caregivers,” she said. “There were some visiting nurses who came to our house and then turned around and left once they realized what they were in for, just based on the stigma.”
At Albany Med, which offers patients social support, drug and alcohol and mental health counseling on top of their medical care, Rushin says he’s never felt discarded the way Zajesky feels her mother often was.
“They don’t just make you feel like they care, they show you they care, they genuinely show you they care about you,” Rushin said.
“I think AMC’s program does a really good job of recognizing the patient as a person and not just a diagnosis, not just a case number,” Zajesky said.
Zajesky believes the compassion she shows each patient is part of her mother’s undying legacy.
“I think I have gotten as much healing out of this job and being able to give back to these patients in a way that I wasn’t able to provide for my mother,” she said.
