{"id":224174,"date":"2025-09-13T18:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T18:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/224174\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T18:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T18:10:09","slug":"hca-florida-orange-park-hospital-hosts-9th-annual-reunion-for-nicu-graduates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/224174\/","title":{"rendered":"HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital hosts 9th annual reunion for NICU graduates"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORANGE PARK, Fla.<\/strong> \u2013 HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital on Saturday hosted its ninth annual NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) reunion. <\/p>\n

The hospital puts on this carnival every year to welcome families back and reconnect with staff who helped care for their precious babies. <\/p>\n

Six-year-old Lucio is a first grader full of life and a whole lot of great energy.<\/p>\n

He was at the reunion with his parents and a special friend, Michelle Oquinn, a NICU clinical nurse coordinator.<\/p>\n

6-year-old Lucio (Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is just a spitfire,\u201d Oquinn said. \u201cHe is just full of life and so so smart. I am so blessed to be a part of his journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oquinn and Lucio go back six years to the day he was born.<\/p>\n

Lucio was born prematurely at 34 weeks and seven pounds. He spent just shy of two weeks in the NICU at HCU at NCA Florida Orange Park Hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had to learn how to breathe, swallow, and suck at the same time,\u201d Scheila Rodriguez, his mother, said. \u201cHe was not able to eat on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baby Lucio in HCA Orange Park NICU (Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why they all said this reunion means so much to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe gets to see the baby that she helped get out of a health crisis that he had when he was born,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cIt is very imperative that we come to support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chad Patrick, the hospital\u2019s CEO, said between 300 and 400 babies end up in its NICU every year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things that are very, very exciting that happen and then there are things that are very tough to deal with sometimes,\u201d Patrick said. ” A lot of these are emergency events and people are not prepared for them. Even our staff have sometimes. It is an exciting time for the staff to reunite with great memories that they can remember.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all love and joy here, and for Lucio, one word sums it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cHappy, yeah happy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE PARK, Fla. \u2013 HCA Florida Orange Park Hospital on Saturday hosted its ninth annual NICU (Neonatal Intensive…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":224175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,15015,3188,723,121568,7310,15017,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-224174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-clay-county","10":"tag-fl","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-hca-orange-park","13":"tag-jacksonville","14":"tag-orange-park","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115198337009213950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}