🔒Hancort uses man’s best friend to cheer up, motivate patients

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Did you hear the one about the nurse who uses a dog to heal her patients? Well, guess what? It's no joke.

Risking ridicule, Heather Hancort, rehabilitation nurse manager for the spinal cord injury and brain injury units at the Gaylord Specialty Healthcare hospital in Wallingford, one day persuaded the officials there — all the way up to the president of the board of directors — to let her do just that, as a way of restoring the medically fragile patients in Connecticut.

Animal-assisted therapy has long been scientifically proven to promote healing, increase patient optimism and lessen pain and stress. But, until Hancort came along, it had never been applied in a hospital setting.

Once she received the authorization, Hancort underwent a rigorous application and vetting process on her own time through Canine Companions for Independence, an organization that raises and trains service dogs. After qualifying to adopt a service dog, she was placed on a long waiting list and, a year and a half later, came home with a sweet-natured Labrador Retriever named Galya that travels to the hospital with her every day and is incorporated into the medical rehabilitation process. The results have been nothing short of magical.

“Galya gets patients motivated to do things they're not willing to do on their own because they think they'll never get better,” Hancort explains. “We had a man with a spinal-cord injury, who couldn't get out of bed for treatment because his blood pressure was too high. I overheard the conversation in the hall and went into the room with Galya. After petting her a couple of times, his blood pressure went back down to normal and he was able to get out of bed. We called it the Galya miracle.”

There have been numerous other Galya miracles, such as the stroke victim who would only open her eyes when Galya was present, or the brain-injured girl who refused to get out of bed for her three-hour speech and physical therapy sessions until it was suggested to her that she take Galya out for a walk. Hancort says the dog has become such an expectation among patients that she has had to put limits on their time with her.

“There's practically a waiting list for her,” she says. “I could do Galya all day and I'd never get anything else done. Patients just eat it up.”

Born and raised in Wallingford, Hancort presently lives in a log cabin in Cheshire with her husband, Justin, two St. Bernards and Galya. Hancort began her career at Gaylord Specialty Healthcare 23 years ago and has worked her way up from bedside nursing into the management ranks.

In addition to supervising 67 staff members in two units at Gaylord, all of whom report directly to her, and making Galya available to her patients, she also works one day a week in the intensive care unit at St. Mary's Hospital in Waterbury, “just to keep my bedside skills up. That's truly what nursing is all about.”

Hancort admits there was a time in her life when nursing was the furthest thing from her mind. She had just graduated from Wilcox Technical School at 18 and moved out of her home, thinking that she could conquer the world with a hair-dressing license.

“Paying my own apartment bills and heat and electric and car insurance soon became quite a challenge, so I went back to school.”

Hancort obtained an associate degree in nursing at Naugatuck Valley Community College, a bachelor's degree at Sacred Heart University and is currently working on her master's degree from the Chamberlain College of Nursing.

“Oh, I love her,” says Skylar Vumback, who was an 18-year-old inpatient in the brain injury unit for two months in 2015, following a ruptured AVM (arteriovenous malformation), when Hancort began regular sessions with Galya. “She's just the coolest person.”

Vumback recalled how Hancort allowed Galya to lay in bed with her and cheer her up after visiting hours, when her family and friends had left the hospital.

“She changed my life,” says Vumback, who still makes a point of visiting Galya, after her speech therapy sessions on Thursdays and Fridays. Hancort even brought Galya to a fundraiser last March to help pay Vumback's medical expenses.

“Heather is a great nurse and a very loving person,” says Vumback's mother Marilee Sarrazin. “She and Skylar have a great bond.”