The nurse she needed: Mom finds hope in nurse with same limb difference as her daughter
By Cameron Polom
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PHOENIX (KNXV) — For Kaiya Jensen, life these days is filled with the kinds of moments she had dreamed about for years — watching her daughter, Anniston, explore the world, one curious glance at a time.
“It sounds cheesy, but honestly, a dream come true,” Jensen said.
Not long ago, the future felt much harder to picture.
After years of infertility and IVF treatments, Jensen finally became pregnant. But with the joy came an unexpected diagnosis.
“The day before I entered into my second trimester, a tech that was doing my ultrasound noticed that she was missing part of her right arm,” Jensen said.
Anniston was otherwise healthy, but that relief was quickly blurred by big questions.
“How’s she gonna ride a bike? How’s she going to tie her shoes? Or will she be able to be a doctor? Or what will her life look like?” Jensen said.
Banner University hospital staff kept mentioning someone Jensen had never met — a labor and delivery nurse with the same limb difference as her daughter would have.
“So then I started looking up on social media nurses with limb differences, doctors with limb differences, and then I found a pianist with a limb difference,” Jensen said.
Though they had yet to meet, the nurse, Kaia Ferrigno, became a source of hope.
“It’s important that people know that they can do whatever they want, no matter what you look like or what kind of difference you have,” Ferrigno said.
On the day Anniston was born, the nurse helping care for Jensen and her newborn turned out to be the very same nurse she had spent months hearing about.
“My doctor was crying, I was sobbing, and I just said, ‘You saved my life,'” Jensen said.
Jensen watched as Ferrigno comforted and cared for her newborn — a moment that helped her see not what Anniston was missing, but everything she could achieve.
“I didn’t have many people who looked like me, and it felt really full circle that I got to be that for somebody else,” Ferrigno said.
Now Jensen doesn’t have to wonder what her daughter can do. The possibilities seem endless.
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