When a nurse accepts the first Daisy Award to be given at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta later this month, the recipient also will be receiving the gratitude of another nurse, who knows firsthand the kind of compassionate care needed to take care of a child with special needs.

Beth Barnby, RN, a cardiovascular educator at Piedmont Hospital, helped launch the award program at Children's as a special thank you to the nurses who took care of her children over the years.

The Barnby's story is one of caring and compassion for children.

Barnby and her husband, Stuart, had one child, Gil, and a hectic life as a military family. When the Barnbys realized that infertility problems would make it difficult for Beth to conceive another child, they decided to look at adoption.

While stationed in Germany, the couple had been foster parents for a Polish child. Now that they were back in the United States, they wanted to adopt.

The couple didn't ask for an infant, and Beth Barnby knew her nursing background meant they would be on a short list to receive a specialneeds child. They looked into the foster-to-adopt program in Georgia and waited.

But the process proved heartbreaking.

They took an infant named Thomas into their South Georgia home for a few years, with the promise they could adopt him, but the little boy was ordered back to his own family by the Department of Family and Children Services. "Our hearts were broken," she said.

New hope for couple

When DFCS called again, the Barnbys were leery of another broken promise.

"They said they had four children who needed a home right away, and one of the children had something wrong with his liver," she said. "The family discussed and prayed about it. We agreed to take the children for the weekend until they could find somebody."

At the time, Beth Barnby was working full time setting up a school nurse program in Miller County. Her husband, a former Army Apache helicopter test pilot, was an analyst for a local corporation.

The children were delivered to their door - ages 4, 21/2, 11/2 and 8 months. "They had been severely neglected, they were in bad shape," she said. Their natural parents were addicted to cocaine.

The Barnbys learned that DJ, the infant, had a rare disease, tyrosinemia Type 1, which prevents the body from digesting the amino acid tyrosinene, one of the building blocks of protein. His older sister, 21.2-year-old Cassie, had the disease and had been given a liver transplant at Children's a few months earlier. Without a liver transplant and proper diet, children with the disease usually die before they reach age 2, Barnby said.

DJ was in poor health, and Cassie was not receiving the medication needed to keep her body from rejecting the donor liver. The other two children were neglected, but healthy otherwise.

The Barnbys immediately restarted the two sick children on their medications, and contacted the genetics and liver transplant teams at Children's. Barnby soon found out that the nursing team knew about DJ and Cassie.

Tender loving care

"The nurses [and doctors] at Children's knew my children before I knew them," Beth Barnby said. "They saved them medically, but they also saved them socially, and I believe, psychologically. They rocked and cuddled and made sure they were loved."

The Barnbys weekend commitment soon stretched to more than three years. While the two older children were sent to live with relatives, DJ and Cassie required regular trips to Atlanta.

After almost two years of commuting from their South Georgia home, the family moved to Atlanta last year. Stuart gave up his job and Beth took the job at Piedmont.

In November 2003, the Barnby's adoption of Cassie and DJ became final.

Beth Barnby decided there must be some way to recognize the nurses at Children's who provide extraordinary care to her children.

"We have the Daisy Award here at Piedmont," she said. During an award ceremony at that hospital, Barnby met the widow of the man in whose memory the Daisy Foundation was created.

Daisy is an acronym for Diseases Attacking the Immune System.

"The Daisy award is given once month to celebrate that a nurse can make a difference," Barnby said.

Barnby will give the first award to a nurse selected by a nomination team at Children's.

Do you have any story ideas for Pulse? Please e-mail or call 404-373-5131.