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Singing Nurse's Talent Boosts Patients' Spirits

Following a car accident in 1996, all Sandra Mattingly want­ed was the chance to continue taking care of hospital patients and making their day a little brighter.

She was given that chance and is making the most of it.

Mattingly, a registered nurse at Prattville Baptist Hospital, has been dubbed the “Singing Nurse” by patients who have heard her break out into song.

Unfortunately, Mattingly couldn’t perform her job for four years after her foot was crushed in an auto crash.

“I asked God to please give me a chance to take care of people again, and I would honor him,” she said. “He answered my pray­ers.”

Doctors were able to design Mattingly a special shoe that al­lowed her to resume her nurs­ing duties.

While working with a patient, Mattingly learned another facet she could add to her nursing skills.

The patient was the grand­mother of one of the doctors, and she was in her final days and preparing to go to a hospice to live them out.

“She wasn’t in the best spir­its, and I asked her if she had heard an old hymn called ‘Far­ther Along,’ and she wanted me to sing it to her,” Mattingly said. “At first, I didn’t want to be­cause I thought I’d get in trou­ble, but then I remembered my promise to honor God.”

Mattingly sang the song for the patient and didn’t think much more about it.

A couple of weeks later, the doctor called her.

“I thought I was in trouble,” she said.

Instead, the doctor was call­ing to tell her that his grand­mother had died and that he wanted Mattingly to sing at the funeral. Again, she was hesi­tant.

“That’s when he told me, ‘It’s not about you, it’s about what you did for her’,” she said. “He told me that she sung that song all the time up until when she died.”

So Mattingly sang at the wom­an’s funeral, and that would be just the beginning of her sing­ing.

At times it was hard for Mat­tingly, who worked a shift of seven days on and seven days off.

On the sixth day of one week, Mattingly found herself in her car tired and frustrated.

“I pounded on my steering wheel asking God to just get me through the week,” she said. “I needed just one day.”

God got her through the day and also gave her a new song.

“I just heard the words in my head,” she said. “It was a song called ‘Just One Day,’ and one day the first verse came and then the second verse would come in my head another day.”

The song focuses on the con­cept that every day you have is important and you need to make the most of it.

Her original song, “Just One Day,” became a hit among the patients at the hospital.

Florence Kilbreth is one of those patients.

“She’s a precious gift,” Kil­breth said. “We have a bond.”

Mattingly continues to sing to patients and also sings at funer­als and churches.

“I’ll sing songs like ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Farther Along,’ ‘Just One Day’ or, sometimes, I just make something up.”

Mattingly said she’d like to make a CD with “Just One Day’ but that she doesn’t know how to go about doing it. She said a lot of people have asked her.

She said she will continue to sing as long as it helps patients.

“They need more than just hanging IVs,” she said.

(c) YellowBrix 2008

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