Parker's Story - MercyOne Des Moines Foundation

On New Year’s Eve one of our colleagues, MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center cardiovascular perfusionist Dane Pratt, was quietly reading to his patient, Parker Baker, in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) while Parker’s mother snapped a photo of the special moment from behind. Little did anyone in the room know how far the one photo would travel in the next few days and the impact Dane’s kind act would have on people beyond our community lines. 

In his three years working with MercyOne Des Moines Medical Center Dane has checked out dozens of books from his local library and read to countless children alongside the quiet hum of the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. As a perfusionist, Dane is trained to maintain, operate and record the output of the ECMO machine, which is also referred to as a heart-lung machine. Typically, patients who are going through an ECMO cycle have to be sedated, which is where the idea of reading to the youngest of patients stemmed for Dane.

We are incredibly grateful for the generous national outpouring of books to MercyOne Children’s Hospital following the stories about MercyOne Perfusionist Dane Pratt reading to a child and his interview on ABC-TV's GMA3 with Strahan, Sara and Keke.

Feel free to send us your favorite new childhood book or you are welcome to make a donation to MercyOne Children’s Hospital.

Thank you on behalf of the children and families we are privileged to serve.

If you choose to send books, please mail to: MercyOne Children’s Hospital at 1111 6th Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50314.