Longtime nurse twice earned top honors at MCO

12/4/2006

Dorothy G. Dottie Hussain, a longtime emergency room nurse at what was then Medical College of Ohio Hospital, where she was twice named Nurse of the Year, died Saturday in her Maumee home.

She was 62 and had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer four years ago, her son Monie said.

Mrs. Hussain, the wife of Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, a Blade columnist, worked as a nurse for about 30 years. She worked in medical-surgical units and in orthopedics, but her love was the emergency room.

She just had a beautiful, what I would call a healing, hand, said Ann Baker, a nurse practitioner who was a longtime friend and co-worker. She was able to approach every individual with compassion, no matter what the issue. Mrs. Hussain studied nursing to follow the footsteps of a favorite aunt, for whom she was named. She graduated from the former Mary Manse College and Maumee Valley Hospital School of Nursing in 1964 and worked in the medical unit and emergency room at Maumee Valley.

There she met Dr. S. Amjad Hussain, who was then a surgeon in training. They married four years later, in 1968.

She worked at Detroit General Hospital on its medical-surgical floor in the late 1960s. In 1970, she, her husband, and their two children moved to Pakistan, where they lived for several years while he was on the faculty of his alma mater, Khyber Medical College in Peshawar.

They lived in Pennsylvania briefly, and when they returned to Toledo in 1975, Mrs. Hussain started nursing at the former Medical College of Ohio.

Late in the 1970s, she moved to what is now St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center, working in its orthopedics department. But she returned to Medical College in the 1980s and remained there until she retired in 1996 to spend her time with a new granddaughter.

Twice during the 1990s, she was named Nurse of the Year at Medical College, chosen by nominations from her peers.

Dottie was probably one of the most dedicated nurses I ve met, said Carol Topliff, a head nurse at the Medical College when Mrs. Hussain was employed there. She was a very, very good nurse. She was a person you wanted to take care of you.

In 1994, she lectured for a couple weeks at West China University of Medical Sciences in Shengdu, China, and in the late 1980s she twice spent the Christmas holidays volunteering at a mobile clinic in the Dominican Republic with Mid West Medical Mission.

At home, she put much energy into Thanksgiving celebrations that sometimes drew as many as 60 people to her home for sit-down dinners. She always prepared turkey and prime rib for her guests, many of whom typically had some connection to medicine or Pakistan. Conversations at such dinners were usually carried out in at least four languages simultaneously, including Urdu and Pashto.

So strong were her family s connections with Pakistan that students who were friends of her husband s family there would often live with the Hussains.

Every summer, she organized an outdoor party at her home that over the years grew to draw more than 300 people. Until it reached the size of about 150 people, Mrs. Hussain prepared much of the food for it.

She was born in Ann Arbor, the second of four children of Albert Brown, a welding shop owner, and his wife, Mabel. She graduated from Chelsea High School in 1962.

With her husband, she traveled extensively in North America, Central America, Europe, and Asia. She belonged to a book club, the St. Charles Hospital Auxiliary, and the Islamic Center of Toledo.

Surviving are her husband, Dr. S. Amjad Hussain; daughter, Natasha R. Hussain-Black; sons, Qarie and Monie; brother, Edwin Brown; sisters, Sue Cubberley and Dr. Kimberly Brown, and two grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 4-8 p.m. today in the Witzler-Shank Funeral Home, Perrysburg, where the funeral will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow.

The family suggests tributes to the S. Amjad and Dorothy G. Hussain Family Fund at the Toledo Community Foundation for nursing scholarships in her name.