Bonnie Thomas was “the rock” of the emergency room at UnityPoint Health-Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines.
“She knew how everything went and she knew a lot people,” says Thomas’ daughter, Elissa Turner.
Thomas did not start out in the medical field; she worked for a time at a bank in her native town of Winterset, Iowa, before moving to Des Moines. She briefly worked on one of the floors at Iowa Lutheran before becoming a clerk in the emergency room.
Turner also eventually became a clerk in the emergency room at Lutheran, although they worked different shifts.
“She was just an extraordinary woman,” Turner says. “She stayed busy and would never sit down.”
Thomas had three children, and several grandchildren. In her spare time, she loved to garden.
“Her yard was just immaculate. She planted a beautiful flower garden. You’d think she had gone to school and learned to do it,” Turner says. “She could tell you what every flower was, what they liked and didn’t like. She spent a lot of her free time doing that.”
After Thomas was diagnosed with breast cancer, she underwent radiation therapy and had no other issues for some time. But she later was diagnosed with scleroderma, an autoimmune disease. Turner says her mother had difficulty swallowing, she had ulcers on her hands, and she developed Reynaud’s disease.
Thomas knew from her years in the emergency room that because of her diagnosis, she would not be eligible to donate her organs and tissues, but she could still be a cornea donor. After she died on January 28, 2023, her corneas were recovered by Iowa Lions Eye Bank and used to restore the sight of two individuals.
“She’s gone but look what good came out of it,” Turner says. “Getting the letter that someone benefited was truly comforting.”