DAISY Award—Twila Ong

Twila Ong
Neonatal NP

Nominator: C. Brandi Hannagan

Reason for Recognition: Reason for Recognition: Although I am an employee, I am also a patient and in August 2024, I delivered my son, at UC Davis Health. After a lengthy induction process and eventual C-section, he was born with distressed breathing and immediately taken to the UC Davis Health NICU. His white blood cell counts were elevated for unknown reasons and over the first night, his vitals took a dip, and he was moved to an even more critical care area. The care team recommended the safest course was rule out Meningitis, but that required a spinal tap - of my 1 day old. With the care team, Twila discussed the option with me and never made me feel bad for asking dozens and dozens of questions. She was attentive, compassionate, understanding, and patient. This is our first baby, who we've waited years for. I was terrified of doing the spinal tap and him being injured at only 1 day old. I was terrified of not doing the spinal tap and his condition progressing. Ultimately, we decided to do the spinal tap to rule out Meningitis. However, I told the care team that although I appreciate, we are a teaching hospital, that I wanted the person performing the spinal tap to be the one with the most experienced hands, whomever that was; and it happened to be Twila. Twila put me at ease with her demeanor and her experience. After performing the spinal tap on the first full day of life for my newborn, Twila let us know that although the procedure was uncomplicated, they couldn’t get any spinal fluid during the puncture - and she had tried twice. But, based on the recommendation from Infectious Diseases, they recommended trying again the next day. So again, I was faced with a terrifying decision to have a second spinal tap on my now 2 day old infant. We went ahead with it, but only trusted Twila and her experience to try again. Ultimately the second round also didn't retrieve any spinal fluid, and the care team recommended not trying a third time so we stayed in the NICU on a broad course of antibiotics. And although the actual procedure didn't capture the spinal fluid, we felt we did the best we could for our little guy, and that the UC Davis Health team and Twila did as well. But through the whole process we were comforted by Twila's compassion, understanding, and bedside manner, and how safe she made us feel and the confidence in her skills. Performing a spinal tap on a newborn is a complicated, challenging procedure- the anatomy is tiny, the babies can't be fully sedated, so they wiggle; our little guy was extra strong and wiggly. But Twila made bearable what felt like an impossible decision, following a series of challenging labor events. We are forever grateful she was on our care team and significantly improved our experience.