“What I find is, most often, [a plaintiff’s situation] is really
not as a consequence of any caregiver negligence,” says DiSilvio.
“The hardest thing to ever accept, for me and for juries, is that bad
things can happen to good people. But sometimes they just do.”
“We didn’t have any real connection
to the outside world, except Sister Mary,”
she says. “There were many cultural
disconnects along the way.” One of
DiSilvio’s earliest memories of culture clash
is from 1974.
Her sister was born that year, on
Christmas Day. “My father’s parents
had come from Italy for the impending
birth of the first American in our family,”
DiSilvio says. “Christmas morning
comes, Diana is born, and I wake up, and
everyone had forgotten about Santa. So
that’s when I came to learn that there
wasn’t a Babbo Natale, which is what we
call him; and to complicate things, my
parents didn’t want me to be shuffled
back and forth to the hospital and to not
have a home base. So they reasoned,
‘OK, we’ll take you to the convent [across
the street],’ and this I remember clear
as a bell: My mother never used cans.
Nothing came out of a can, ever. I’d never
intellectualized that people take food out
of a can and put it on a plate and eat it.
So [the sisters] were opening cranberry
sauce and they will tell you I had a look
of terror on my face like, ‘Am I expected
to eat this?’”
As she approached college age,
DiSilvio’s father encouraged her to go to
nursing school. Why? She laughs. “He had
done a flagstone walk for someone who
taught at the [University of] Penn School
of Nursing,” she says. “He found her to be
a very bright and dynamic person, so he
really encouraged that.”
Indeed, DiSilvio was enamored with
nursing, especially the neonatal intensive-
care unit. After working for a time in a
pediatric unit at The Children’s Hospital
of Philadelphia, she relocated to Rainbow
Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland.
“I loved every minute of working at [that]
hospital,” she says. “And I met a wonderful
woman named Judy Hoechst, who, although
not my formal preceptor, became a huge
mentor to me.” Hoechst was going through
law school. Cue a door being opened.
