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Long-time nurse retires after 60 years

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO - Pictured is Jan Faber in her graduation photo in 1958.

For Registered Nurse Jan Faber, it’s all about the eyes.

After 60 years of service to the Marshalltown hospital, primarily assisting with eye surgeries, she has retired at age 82.

In her six decades on the job, Faber witnessed a variety of medical advancements that restored people’s vision and improved their lives. She served as the lead nurse when surgeons at Wolfe Eye Clinic in Marshalltown began performing phacoemulsification (a new type of cataract surgery) in 1972. She’s assisted on almost every eye surgery in practice today, including for the treatment of glaucoma, macular degeneration and crossed eyes.

A native of Alden, she had her mind set on going to nursing school, deciding to enroll at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital School of Nursing in Marshalltown.

“The entry fee for three years of nursing education was $475,” she said.

T-R PHOTO BY SARA JORDAN-HEINTZ - After 60 years in nursing, Jan Faber has retired. A scrub nurse for local eye surgeons, she was part of a team that helped pioneer a new form of cataract surgery in the 1970s.

During her final year of schooling, she wed her sweetheart, the late Merle Faber.

“Students could only get married in the last six months of their schooling,” she said. “Then I was in a car accident with my husband. We were going home for Christmas and as a result, I suffered a blow to my throat, which injured my voice box and I lost the majority of my teeth. I couldn’t sing for four years, which was hard, and I missed some schooling.”

While her peers graduated in May of 1958, she had three months to make up. However, the school’s director of nurses was looking out for her.

“We were at a tea at the country club and the director of nurses introduced all the graduates. When it came to me, I had not applied at the hospital, but she introduced me by my name and said I was going to start in the operating room, and so I’ve never applied at the hospital — there’s no application for me,” she said with a laugh. “I went with it.”

That September, Faber went to work at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital (now UnityPoint Health – Marshalltown). In 1962, she got the opportunity to transition full-time into working as a scrub nurse for local eye surgeons, including the staff at the nearby Wolfe Eye Clinic.

The dedicated nurse rarely missed work, even during her pregnancies. All four of her children were born at the hospital: daughters Debra and Nancy and her late sons Curt and Roger.

“I saved my vacation time and I worked until I delivered. Even with Nancy I was in labor when I went to work and Dr. Russ Watt (at Wolfe) said ‘how long have you been in labor, Jan.’ Then she was born the next morning,” Faber said.

In 1972, Faber began assisting with phacoemulsification, a new, cutting edge treatment for cataracts. Using this technique, the affected lens is liquefied with ultrasonic vibrations and then extracted by suction. But before the doctors performed the surgery on the first patient, they took courses on the Kelman technique, named after its pioneering doctor. Then they sought animals in which to try out the machine, recruiting them from the Animal Rescue League of Marshalltown.

“The testing on cats was a short period of time — September until December, and the cats were anesthetized,” Faber said. “They wanted to see how the eye reacted to the motion of the machine. It was only done on one eye, and so the cat could still see out of the other one (after surgery).”

John Graether, M.D, emeritus ophthalmologic surgeon at Wolfe Eye Clinic, said he requested Faber be the nurse involved in the testing on cats and the subsequent procedures performed on patients, because of her infinite skills. Since the treatment, beginning in 1975, consisted of removing the clouded lens and implanting a plastic one, which ran risks, Graether said only a small number of doctors in the United States were performing the procedure.

“We (the four doctors) probably each did 10 to 12 cat operations. And that was very helpful, because you quickly learned which types of lenses were likely to work with this procedure, and you learned what the machine was doing inside the eye and how to avoid surgical trauma,” Graether said.

One highlight of Faber’s long career includes being the scrub nurse during then-Iowa governor Robert D. Ray’s controversial cataract surgery, performed at the Marshalltown Wolfe Eye Clinic in 1981 by Graether.

Graether said before this new surgery, clouded lenses were simply removed and the patient was required to wear thick glasses for the rest of his or life in order to see clearly. A plastic lens implant, on the other hand, not only removed the cataract but tended to greatly improve the patient’s overall vision.

“(The governor) had gone to the University of Iowa (eye clinic) where they discouraged him from having a lens implant, but after he learned of our experience from our former employee, Dr. Harry Rasdal, his campaign finance chairman, he met with us,” Graether said. “I insisted on having Jan as my scrub nurse as I had full confidence in her ability and cool demeanor.”

Graether said the success of the procedure propelled the clinic’s reputation.

“I first did the governor’s right eye, then later his left, and he was still seeing clearly through those lenses until the time of his recent death,” he said. “The enormous publicity that operation engendered throughout the state caused thousands of Iowans to seek out our clinic for a lens implant a full decade or more before this operation became the standard of care in the rest of the nation.”

Although she’s now retired from the hospital, Faber still works two jobs: serving as an aid at Home Instead Senior Care and cleaning at her church, First Presbyterian.

“Jan was there. She helped train nurses. By playing a vital supporting role with exceptional skill and diligence, she has positively influenced the lives of many Iowans she has never met,” Graether said.

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