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Delivering joy: Nurse creates balloon displays at WHS CARE Center

By Karen Mansfield newsroom@heraldstandard.Com 2 min read
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Courtesy of Washington Health System

WHS CARE Center nurse Christina Furlong began making balloon displays for New Year’s Eve last year.

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Photos: Courtesy of Washington Health System

WHS CARE Center nurse Christina Furlong gets some help from her son, Nicholas Pantelidis, to make balloon displays for the labor and delivery unit.

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Courtesy of Washington Health System

This balloon display was created by WHS CARE Center nurse Christina Furlong. Parents often take photos with their newborns with the balloon arches as a backdrop before leaving the hospital.

Christina Furlong, a nurse in the labor and delivery unit at Washington Health System’s CARE Center for Family Birth and Women’s Health, delivers joy in more ways than one.

Furlong makes holiday and themed balloon displays for the unit.

Since Furlong made her first display last New Year’s, the popularity of her colorful works of art has, well, ballooned.

“I worked last New Year’s Eve, and I threw one together in the doorway. We had one baby, and the mom loved it so much, and I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to keep doing it,'” said Furlong. “And I kind of kept on doing it. It really makes the unit brighter.”

Over the course of the year, Furlong – with an assist from her 18-year-old son, Nicholas Pantelidis – has assembled displays for holidays and events including Valentine’s Day, Easter, a luau, and Halloween.

Her displays have become a popular backdrop for parents to take photos with their newborns before leaving the CARE Center.

The balloons have brought joy and happiness to the nurses and staff, too.

“One of my co-workers over the summer said, ‘I just love coming in and seeing the balloons. I don’t know what’s going to be up, and it makes me happy.’ And that made me happy,” said Furlong.

Furlong said she discovered she enjoyed making balloon displays in November 2021, when she helped a friend assemble a large archway for a bar mitzvah.

“I thought, wait, I really like this. This is my mid-life crisis,” Furlong, a nurse for nearly 20 years, said with a laugh. “I switched from the emergency room to labor and delivery and made balloons. I needed happy, and this is happy.”

Furlong is now working on a Christmas display.

“Balloons make people happy, and that’s really why I do it,” said Furlong. “Balloons equal happiness.”

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