On April 15, 2013, Hopkins School of Nursing graduate Jessica Kensky was standing with new husband Patrick Downes at the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a bomb went off. Each lost a leg that day. Kensky would lose her other leg down the line.
Nursing school classmate Leah Pike was the first of Kensky’s nursing friends to arrive by her side after the bombing, but she would not be the only one. The list of angels is a long one, full of classmates from Kensky’s Wolfe Street days, colleagues from her time at the Weinberg surgical intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and co-workers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
She credits their selflessness with helping her survive the ordeal.
Now more than ever, Kensky believes that nursing friendships are different from others, not least because of the profession itself and the quality of the people drawn to it.
She told her story to 2015 JHSON graduates.