It’s National Nurses Week, and Hoda Kotb is expressing her appreciation for the people who serve as the backbone of our healthcare systems.
On May 18, Hoda shared how the actions of a nurse who helped care for her 3-year-old daughter Hope “meant everything” during a recent and challenging period in her life.
In February, the TODAY co-anchor took a brief leave of absence from the show to be with her daughter after a health scare required her to spend a little over a week at a New York City hospital.
“I was just thinking about when Hope was in the hospital for one of those days ... It was 3 a.m., and I was just sitting in this chair,” Hoda recalled, noting the experience of seeing her daughter struggle with her health was surreal.
“This nurse walked in and — I still remember — put her hand on my back ... didn’t even say anything. Just sat there for a minute,” Hoda continued. “A lot of what (nurses) do isn’t just about giving the IV and the needles and the stuff and the tests and all those things. It’s more than that.”
Hoda remarked that she eventually turned to the nurse for help making Hope feel more comfortable.
“I remember I was there, and I asked for a bath for (Hope). I wanted to give her a bath, and they could only sponge her, and I said, ‘Please, I’m begging you,’” Hoda explained. “‘I just want a bath here for my child,’ and I remember we got this little plastic thing, and we put it in the shower and put Hope in it. And I remembered like that tiny thing, but it was everything at that time.”
It’s not the first time Hoda has spoken about her gratitude for the caretakers who looked after her daughter during her stay in the hospital.
On her first day back from her absence on the show, Hoda expressed her appreciation for the doctors and nurses involved in Hope’s care while catching up with her co-anchor Savannah Guthrie.
“You know what I realized, too, Savannah? When your child is ill, the amount of gratitude you can have for people who helped you out,” she said at the time. “I’m grateful for the doctors at Weill Cornell who were amazing and the nurses. And I’m grateful to my family, and I’m grateful to friends like you who were there every single day. So, I want to say thank you for that. I love you.”
“I’m over the moon that she’s home,” she said. “And I can’t believe how amazing people are. Like, that’s the thing I learned through all this; the nurses who stood by her all the way, the nurses who checked on her constantly, the doctors who came in, the people who took care of us. And I felt like we were held.”
