TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – A Tampa nurse and snowbird navigated heartbreak and healing through one of the things she knows best before her deserved retirement next month.
Grace Adams is a registered nurse at AdventHealth in Tampa. She also worked for a few hospitals in the area through the winter months, traveling from her native Canada.
She was married to her late husband, Dave, for 26 years. He retired before her and wanted to be in Florida.
“My love is being a nurse and I wasn’t ready to retire. So I said, ‘if we’re both going to have what we want, then how about I get a Florida license?” Adams said.
Adams found her first job outside of Canada in Zephyrhills in 2016-17. The year after, she did a traveling assignment in St. Petersburg.
The following year, her late husband helped her find her current hospital, AdventHealth Tampa.
“I was so excited to start. So we went home to Canada to get everything ready and organized, because I was going to work from January to April,” she said. “On Christmas Eve, he drove me to work. I kissed him goodbye and he went home and died.”
Adams said he had a hole in his aorta. She said he looked like he was comfortable and died peacefully.
Despite their plans to leave for Tampa very soon and for her to begin her new job just only two weeks after Dave’s death, Adams decided to head down on her own.
“I felt like there was something to it that he had found this job. It’s as if he had gotten everything in order for me and it was up to me to then walk the walk,” she said.
While getting to her first days on the job were difficult, Adams began her journey of healing almost immediately, through strangers she had just met
“It really was incredible how everything happened. There were like angels that appeared,” she said. “I ended up working with a staff, a remarkable staff, and we just all basically fell in love. And they were there to support me and help me and hold me whenever I needed it.”
She eventually opened up to her staff and administration for some extra help as she continued to cope. But being with her patients, even throughout difficult times throughout the coronavirus pandemic, helped her continue to heal.
“And the magic of it, as a nurse, you think about others. I couldn’t be in the space where I was thinking about my plight,” Adams said. “But then when I was taking care of patients who were going through a really difficult time, I could hold their hand and say, ‘I understand what you need.’”
Adams floats through different wings of the hospital. She said she has worked in the emergency room, COVID floors, the women’s health center and wherever she’s needed. Wherever she is, she wears her trademark nurse’s cap, styled like one introduced in the early days of the profession. She started wearing it during National Nurse’s Week a few years ago and hasn’t stopped.
Adams said it’s a big hit around the hospital.
“I wear it proudly, because I graduated in 1979, we wore caps back then. So I wore it quite proudly and at the end of that week, one of my 23-year-old colleagues said to me, ‘hey, Grace, where’s your cap?’ And I said, ‘well, it’s in my locker.’ She said, ‘Grace, you rock that cap, go put it on!’” she said.
On her last shift, Adams said her colleagues will wear the traditional cap as well.
Before her retirement next month, Adams found a new love, who has three children and a grandchild. They plan on traveling between both countries, and here to the Tampa Bay area.
“Definitely being down in this area will be part of our future,” she said.