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Steven
Klotzbuecher was a mechanic for nearly 30 years before a
horrific car accident led him down a new career path —
nursing.
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At a stable near Milwaukee, there’s a
horse named "My Happy Ending."
How he got his name is a story with
more convolutions than a dressage event at a national horse show.
Certainly there are easier ways for a
daughter to get a pony and a dad to change careers late in life.
For about three years, Milwaukeean
Steven Klotzbuecher, R.N., has been a nurse in a surgical wing at
Froedtert Hospital. The primary focus of his unit is surgical
telemetry; he and the other nurses monitor the hearts of patients
after thoracic and abdominal surgery. The patients he cares for are
very sick, so families and friends can be frightened by all the
medical apparatus surrounding their loved one. He keeps one eye on the
patient and the other on the family because, as he says, "I know
what it’s like."
Until a spring day in 1999,
Klotzbuecher worked for 27 years as an ace mechanic at David Hobbs
Honda.
"I have always been curious,"
he says. "What makes a lawn mower work? At the time of the
accident, I was happy with my job; I enjoyed putting in a new oil
pump. I was a team leader and had four good guys reporting to
me."
The accident he refers to came within a
hair’s breadth of taking the life of his only child, a daughter,
Heidi.
The car she was riding in was hit in an
intersection by a truck; in photos of the wreck, the car looks like a
convertible. It was not.
Heidi was taken in a Flight for Life
helicopter to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, where she spent 30
days in the pediatric intensive care unit. Her father never — not
once — left her side.
"That was my first experience with
intensive care," he says. "I was there so long, I started
helping out if the nurses were busy."
Medical staff urged the family to give
Heidi a reason to struggle against her massive injuries, and it didn’t
take them long to figure one out.
Heidi had ridden horses since she was
8, but never owned a horse. Guess what they whispered in her ear?
When it became apparent that against
all odds she would recover and the day came for her to leave the ICU,
a nurse said to Klotzbuecher, "You’re good at this. You should
be a nurse."
After taking prerequisites, learning
how to burn the midnight oil for exams and sweating buckets through
the nursing board exams, Klotzbuecher graduated from Milwaukee Area
Technical College and was licensed in 2005. Of the 144 students who
began in his class, only 25 graduated. Klotzbuecher, a rare male
nurse, likes to joke that he works around so many women he’s
"beginning to crave chocolate."
Klotzbuecher is delighted to report
that 23-year-old Heidi, ignoring her lingering aches and pains, is
riding in national competitions and attending college.
"You have to have motivation to
make such a switch in mid-life," he says. "It starts with
thinking, ‘If I don’t try, I’ll regret it from my rocking chair.’
To be a nurse you have to have a passion for caring for others and be
totally dedicated to serving them."
He’s become more philosophical:
"I think there is a Higher Power, although I don’t know exactly
what the hereafter is. I do believe we have a purpose in life."
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