It’s another Tuesday at the Lamb County Healthcare Center, where Candace, “Candy,” Dalton has spent the last 32 years of her healthcare career.
Only this time, instead of prepping to assist with surgery, Dalton is preparing for retirement.
With over 45 years of experience in healthcare, 66-year-old Candy Dalton enters this new chapter of freedom with fond memories of significant connections made through the decades.
“I had my very best days here and my very worst days,” Dalton said. “I lost both my parents when I worked here and recently lost my husband, but I had my work family that I could lean on. That’s what’s important. You need a job where the people are family, and it’s not just, ‘I go to work for my paycheck.’” Dalton’s career did not initially start that way, however.
Originally, Dalton worked as a nurse’s aide at the former South Plains Hospital in Amherst to make a living. Combing her long hair to sit neatly at the top of her head and dressing up in allwhite starched dresses and stockings every day, she quickly understood the demands of patient care and had reservations about her position.
Noticing this, another nurse aide took Dalton under her wing and mentored her through thick and thin.
“She noticed I was having a really hard time,” Dalton said, “and she said, ‘There’s nothing to this. We’ll be a pair, we’ll go together, and I will help you.’” Most memorably, Dalton recalled the gospel songs the nurse aide sang to difficult patients just as she sang to her own children.
Through prayers and guidance, the nurse aide inspired Dalton to stay, and she fell in love with taking care of people.
For the next few decades, Dalton remained committed to doing just that.
As Dalton continued to work in rural health, medical standards shifted, pushing her to eventually receive a surgical technologist certificate through Amarillo College.
With the help and support of the doctors at the hospital, Dalton was able to work and earn her certification simultaneously. Although an unlikely candidate for an OR Tech, Dalton found her calling.
“At the class reunion, the biology teacher said, ‘Candy is the most unlikely person to be in that healthcare situation because in biology, she took an F for refusing to put her hand in a cow heart,’” Dalton laughed.
From gallbaldders to amputations, Dalton witnessed and assisted with nearly every form of surgery possible. Nonetheless, she still has a favorite procedure.
“My favorite surgery is Csections because you’re helping two people instead of one,” Dalton said.
Of the several mothers and babies she assisted, many of them recognize Dalton years later and approach her with updates about their lives. This sentiment alone resonates greatly with Dalton, she said.
“I am on my third generation of C-sections,” Dalton said.
Remaining in rural health, Dalton said her dedication is in smaller communities, not the money.
“I had one administrator tell me, ‘You know you can make more money in Lubbock,’” Dalton said. “I would tell him, ‘Lubbock is not where God wanted me to be; he put me in this area.’ I really liked healthcare because I knew the people I was taking care of.”
Now, as Dalton’s routine changes from seven days on, to seven days off, to having the entire week to herself, she is learning to adjust to the changes the same way she formerly adjusted to take on a healthcare role.
With the guidance of her faith, loved ones and the spirit of her late husband, Michael Dalton, Candy awaits the next milestones.
Akin to the life-changing milestone her grandmother is set to start, Candy’s granddaughter, Alexaundrea Dalton, is a recent honors graduate of Littlefield High School.
Alexaundrea expressed her pride and admiration for her grandmother’s unwavering dedication to her work and reminisced on the times she came to the hospital to catch more time with Candy after school.
“She’s definitely one of the hardest workers I know,” Alexaundrea Dalton said. “Even on the days she felt sick, she would still come to work because she knew she had a job to get done. I would never consider her lazy.”
From the times Alexaundrea witnessed her grandmother remain on-call, to the times spent in her office sticking stickers all over the place, Alexaundrea hopes her grandmother finds solitude in this newfound freedom and invites her to call her as she embarks on her own newfound freedom during college.
“She just now ended, and I am just now beginning,” Alexaundrea Dalton said. “Hopefully, I can find a place that I love to work at just as much as she did.”
Candy Dalton celebrated 45 years in healthcare alongside family and friends at the hospital atrium.
“Helping my community is something I’ve always wanted,” Dalton said. “I want this hospital to thrive and be here. I have roots here. I love EMS, and I love the different departments – it was just the right place for me to stay.”