Why caddie bibs will have two different names

Sreevani Bodavula decided to become a nurse eight years ago.

She was in medical school at the time, intending to become a doctor like her father, mother and two of her sisters. Her dad had been diagnosed with liver cancer, though, and she returned home to St. Louis to be with her family.

It was a frightening time for the close-knit group. But something about the comfort and care his nurses provided to her father every day “spoke” to Bodavula. So shortly after he underwent a successful liver transplant, she applied to nursing school.

“We weren't sure whether or not he would pull through at all,” she recalls. “It was really important to me to try to make that same kind of impact in someone else's life. The doctors did a great job, but it was really the nurses who came in the week he was in the hospital, sent him flowers the weeks he recovered at home, and made sure that our family, as a whole, survived the whole ordeal.”

For the last two years, Bodavula has been working as a nurse at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, which is just 38 minutes from Fort Worth’s Colonial Country Club, where this week’s Charles Schwab Challenge will be played as the PGA TOUR and golf makes its return.

During the past three months, she has been working exclusively with patients suffering from COVID-19, the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus that has resulted in more than 7 million confirmed cases and 400,000 deaths worldwide.

Each round of the Charles Schwab Challenge, as well as for the next two weeks on TOUR, the name of a frontline worker such as Bodavula will be worn on the caddie bib of every player competing in the tournament.

Harry Higgs, who went to Southern Methodist and now lives in Dallas, will be “paired” with Bodavula, the married mother of a 3-year-old who works three 12-hour shifts each week while juggling what have now become Zoom classes as she pursues a master’s degree to become a family nurse practitioner.

“It’s the first big sporting event to be put on as we're starting to reemerge from COVID,” Bodavula says. “... I think it's great that it's here in North Texas and it's in our hometown (and) that people can fully get back to their new normal, too.”

Alan Kramer’s name will be featured alongside Justin Rose, who also happens to be one of his favorite golfers. The assistant vice president for Health System Emerging Strategies at UT Southwestern, Kramer had to accelerate the organization’s telehealth program originally scheduled for rollout this summer.

The goal for the first year was 600 virtual visits – only now the healthcare system is doing several thousand each day. Kramer also mobilized and helped train more than 1,400 primary care and specialty medical providers so that patients who were afraid to come to a clinic or the hospital during the pandemic could get care.

Kramer says that same technology will be used this week at Colonial should a player or a caddie or someone else working at the tournament begin to feel sick. He appreciates the focus being put on the work he and his colleagues throughout all disciplines at UT Southwestern have done.

“For the PGA TOUR, with all of the different planning and everything going on to stage this event, for them to pause for a minute and say, how can we recognize the North Texas community, particularly the healthcare heroes in that community?” Kramer says. “It means a lot. And I think it says a lot about the values of the PGA TOUR.”

Bodavula comes from a family of caregivers. Her husband is a pediatrician who works at an outpatient clinic. Her father still works as a hand surgeon while her mother is a retired pediatrician. In addition to her two sisters who are doctors – the third “can't even look at blood with getting squeamish,” she says -- Bodavula’s twin brother earned his master’s degree in Health Administration last December.

“I always tell people, it's not normal,” she says. “It's very unusual to me that my entire family is physicians.”

Before the COVID-19 crisis reared its ugly head, Bodavula worked on a medical-surgery floor where patients were often acutely ill but with various medical problems. The move to treating those with coronavirus exclusively was an adjustment due to the many unknowns -- but now it’s her new normal, including putting on three layers of protection before seeing a patient and then taking it off and doing it all over again before seeing the next.

“I will say that UT Southwestern has done a great job of making sure we feel safe and protected, even as far as making sure that we feel supported mentally and emotionally,” Bodavula says.

And make no mistake, there have been emotional moments. Many of them. While she says there were times when she knows she made a difference in the past, treating COVID-19 patients has taken that to a totally different level. In the U.S., there have been more than 2.1 million cases, with 114,000 deaths.

“I know that I am helping these patients in a very critical time where they are very sick,” Bodavula says. “It's been challenging to not be able to work with the patient's family as well. ... I've had patients’ families call me wanting updates or very concerned with how their family members are doing, and it's hard. It's not what nurses are used to in terms of having to update via phone. ...

“I think one of the biggest things in nursing that goes understated is the mere act of human touch and being able to put your hand on someone's hand and let them know that they are not alone and that you really feel for them. I've had patients cry and just want a box of tissues and a hand to hold, and that's very challenging when you're in three layers of protective equipment and you're trying to get in and get out as quickly as you can to keep yourself safe.”

But Bodaluva has been heartened by the success stories. She has seen patients be discharged to rehabilitation facilities to continue their recovery. She has seen many others get to return home and quarantine.

And she knows she made the right choice.

“If anything, being a nurse throughout COVID has only made me more resolute in terms of this is what I should have been doing all along,” Bodaluva says. “And everything happens for a reason. And I guess it took my father being really sick and me realizing at 30-something this is what I wanted to do, but I'm fortunate to do what I do and to work with the people that I work with because I could have a very different story, and fortunately, I have only really good things to say.

“It's been such an experience in everything, from how I approach patients to how I approach my own life to my child, my husband. I never, ever, in a million years, thought that I'd live to see the day that every part of everybody's life has just been affected by this. ...

“My sister, who's a physician, was saying, ‘There hasn't been a single war that's even wiped out this many people as COVID has.’ And it really just does shake you into the core. And if I let myself let my guard down and not think so robotically, like I kind of have to as a nurse, I'm sure that I would probably be a puddle of tears every day. But I guess it's good that we have that built in because there's no room for that when you're taking care of these sick patients.”

It’s that kind of commitment and dedication the TOUR is recognizing this week on the backs of 148 caddies at the Charles Schwab Challenge.