Years ago, Jan Cathey took a look at her best friend as she lay in a nursing home bed and saw something so stunning that she decided to take matters into her own hands even though Jan had never been a caregiving professional. Receiving permission from her friend’s family, Jan moved her friend 500 miles from Denver to her New Mexico home, where Jan remodeled a bedroom and bought a special bed to accommodate her friend’s care.
Two years earlier, Jan’s friend had taken early retirement from teaching and had moved to Colorado to be with her daughter and new baby granddaughter. Then shockingly, Jan’s friend suffered a stroke, followed by a heart attack, leaving her paralyzed on her right side and in a wheelchair. She could speak but began having more medical problems that forced her into a rehabilitation facility and then into a couple of nursing homes.
“My friend’s medical situation kept getting worse, and every time I checked, it became more dire. Then I was notified by her daughter that my friend was on hospice. I was devastated and immediately drove to Denver and met with her daughter, other family members, a doctor and the nursing home staff. I learned she had a terrible bed sore, was on a feeding tube, had been vomiting for days nonstop, had diarrhea, was on a catheter and had been hospitalized five times in the last month. Now she was refusing any further treatment,” Jan recalled.
“I asked if there was anything they were doing that I couldn’t do in my home if I had the right equipment and home health agency professionals to consult and come in as needed. They said no. I asked her daughter for permission to remove her mother from that nursing home and let me take care of her in New Mexico. With reluctance – because she didn’t think I could do it – she said ‘OK.’ I told them to give me two weeks to make the preparations, and I’d be back to get her. I went to my friend’s room and told her. We both cried,” explained Jan, who years later moved to the Front Range and joined Home Instead® of Boulder, Broomfield and northwest Adams Counties, a franchise based in Louisville, Colorado.
Jan went home to New Mexico, called a home health business and made arrangements. She then called a medical supply company and ordered a special bed. Jan added: “I emptied a bedroom and called a carpet cleaner and a painter. I am a very strong believer, and I went in and wrote every Bible verse on healing I could find all over those walls, plus words of love, encouragement, joy and blessings for my friend. Almost every inch of those walls was covered with beautiful words. When the painter saw it, it brought tears to his eyes as he covered it all over with paint. He loved knowing what was underneath and why it was there.”
After two weeks, the room was ready for Jan’s friend, and Jan returned to Denver to get her. Along with her friend’s family and Jan’s sister, they loaded her friend into Jan’s Jeep and all moved her to Jan’s New Mexico home, where her friend had visited hundreds of times before. “I had no idea what was ahead of me, but I knew with God’s help, I was not going to let my best friend die. Beginning that night when we arrived, I took care of her 24/7,” Jan said.
Jan had a baby monitor in her friend’s room, and Jan was up at the slightest sound. The challenges seemed countless. Her friend was diabetic and on a feeding tube. There was a catheter, and her friend couldn’t turn over in bed by herself. She also was vomiting several times a day and had diarrhea. There also was the terrible bed sore that had to be treated several times a day. “My friend was on about 16 medications. I had never done anything like this, but I was a fast learner. A home health company sent a nurse a couple of times a week, and the nurse taught me a lot. But for the most part, I was on my own, especially in the beginning,” Jan said.
While caring for her friend, Jan lost 17 pounds during that first month. “But I kept everything positive and made sure my friend knew how much I loved her by telling her constantly,” Jan said, “and I kept finding things to make her laugh every day. She loved that so much. Slowly, I began to see her depression lift as her wonderful personality started to come back.”
Jan kept her friend in her home for a year. When Jan took her friend back to her family in Colorado, she was a different person. Her friend was still in a wheelchair, but she could transfer by herself in and out of bed and in and out of a car. Her bedsore was totally gone, there was no feeding tube or catheter, and she was using the toilet. Jan said: “Additionally, she was eating normally, including the spicy Mexican food that she loved. She was able to go home to Denver, and she moved into assisted living, not a nursing home. I had my best friend for another 10 good years, and it was such a joy.”
After her care for her friend had ended, Jan welcomed her own mother into her home for about a year before her mother passed away from the effects of dementia.
So, when Jan joined owner Michael Lammers’ award-winning Home Instead franchise, there was little doubt among the Home Instead staff members that Jan was a perfect fit for a Care Professional position. Jan already had gone through the “caregiving fire” – several, in fact – and was more than ready to help Home Instead clients. Four months after joining Home Instead, Jan was honored as the office’s Care Pro of the Month for July. One staff member said: “Jan has to be right up there for the Care Pro of the Year award. We love her.”
All Home Instead Care Professionals are screened, trained and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (720) 890-0184 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
