Claudia Lukas is the May 2009 All Children's Hospital Employee of the Month. Claudia works in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology as a Physician Assistant and has been with All Children's since 2007. A mother of one of our patients recognized Claudia's Service Excellence and nominated her for Employee of the Month honors. Mom said: 
I need to tell you what Claudia has done for my daughter and family. My daughter has been a patient of Hematology since 2006. She is being followed for Neutropenia [the situation where the number of neutrophils in the blood is too low. Neutrophils are important in defending the body against bacterial infections and therefore, a patient with too few neutrophils is more susceptible to bacterial infection. Neutropenia can occur for different reasons. Patients with cancer may become neutropenic because of chemotherapy they receive. Sometimes neutropenia occurs after a viral infection. Some patients are born with neutropenia as in the case of Cohen Syndrome.]
Normally Claudia sees us when we go into the office. She is always pleasant and I relate to her really well and pretty much understand everything she tells me. Claudia called me with some results from a new test for my daughter. After going over those results, which we are still in the process of getting more information for, Claudia brought to attention something called 'Cohen Syndrome'. She said that based on the test something kept bringing her to websites dealing with the Cohen Syndrome. When she looked further into it and compared my daughter's traits to those listed for the other cases diagnosed, she just couldn't stop thinking that we needed to get this other test (COH1 DNA test) done on my daughter. So, I took my daughter to the lab for the test. In the meantime I did a lot of surfing on the web and looked at pictures of others and had a gut feeling Claudia had something here. I called the lab and they said the results came back and Genetics said results were positive for Cohen's - chromosome 8 had two bad mutations. After 13 ½ years of not knowing, I have a name to the mystery. If it were not for Claudia's concern and compassion our lives would not have changed in the blink of an eye. For that I am forever grateful to her.
Claudia, thank you so much for your wonderful Service Excellence and all you do for the patients and families at All Children's Hospital. Congratulations for receiving the May 2009 Employee of the Month honors!
