Family Caregiving Prepared Dawn for Home Instead
How did Dawn Wilson react when her family’s flurry of challenging health news began impacting her in 2013 and continued for five years? For one thing, Dawn rolled up her sleeves and dived in to help as a family caregiver. Then, she didn’t let the sorrow overwhelm her when death visited her senior loves ones. She figured other people could benefit from her experience and her compassionate heart, so she joined Home Instead® of Mount Airy on Sept. 2, 2015.
“It had been a very hard few years. I knew after all those losses, helping families with their senior loved ones was what I wanted to do. Home Instead has given me the platform to do just that. My background in professional caregiving isn’t very extensive, but my family caregiving got me started with Home Instead,” Dawn said.
Dawn’s uncle was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013, and her grandmother had developed Alzheimer’s disease about the same time. “My dad was also diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer on my brother’s birthday, Jan. 26, 2014. So, caregiving began for me at that time,” Dawn recalled.
“I quit my job and started to help my mom with the care of my dad and grandmother. Sadly, my uncle passed away in June 2014. By mid-summer 2014, my dad had been in and out of the hospital several times, and I stayed with my grandmother so Mom could be by Dad’s side. She never left him, not even once.”
Dawn and her family decided to move her grandmother in with Dawn’s mom. “With that move, Mom could take care of Grandma and my dad a lot easier. I stayed with my grandmother while Mom took Dad to chemotherapy three to four times a week. I did all the extra running for Mom so she could be with Dad. I took the cars to be serviced, did the grocery shopping, mowed the yard and took care of all the things my dad used to do,” Dawn explained.
Meanwhile, it seemed that Dawn’s father was thriving despite his chemotherapy, but his doctors wanted him to take radiation as well. Dawn said: “We could not make this decision for Dad. He decided to take it, and it literally burned him alive. My dad passed away Dec. 29, 2014, and we buried him on New Year’s Eve. That was the absolute worst day of my life. My dad was the first man I ever loved and the only man who ever loved me unconditionally, but he had to leave me because of his declining health. I couldn’t stop it from happening.”
After her father’s death, Dawn still helped her mom with her grandmother’s care. “Alzheimer’s robbed my grandmother of everything. Mom didn’t want to place her in a nursing home, so she kept her at home until she passed. I worked, but I was there every day after work until around 9 p.m. after we got her to bed. I fed her dinner, gave her medicines and changed her clothes for night time. It was a very long, drawn-out process that eventually took my grandmother’s life in January 2018,” said Dawn, who had experienced another major tragedy before her grandma died. Dawn’s boyfriend of five years was killed in a car accident June 5, 2016.
Dawn made the move from family caregiving to professional senior care about 6½ years ago when she found Home Instead online and joined the award-winning franchise owned by Van and Ann Lankford. Dawn said: “My other work background had stretched across a broad spectrum. I had done textiles, food service, management and merchandising. I volunteered at the Red Cross and worked with many other organizations.”
Home Instead honored Dawn as its Care Professional of the Month for March 2022. “I love getting to know clients and their families. I remember just how important and caring the professional caregivers, CNAs and hospice nurses were to my family. We needed them, and they were wonderful,” Dawn said.
She said she has so many memorable Home Instead stories, but one client in particular “was the most amazing woman.” Dawn was with the client five days a week for almost five years. “She was just the most precious lady. I loved her, she knew it and she loved me, too. It was a friendship, not just a working relationship. She was my sidekick. She had the best stories of her life as a child, during her adolescence, and as a wife and mother. I was very hurt upon her passing,” Dawn said.
Dawn also said, “There was another client who I had to drive to a restaurant for dinner in the evening. There was a specific restaurant for each night of the week. He and his wife had done this. Since the wife’s passing, the widower said the dinner routine kept his wife’s memory close to him, even if it was just for dinner.”
Dawn loves being a part of the Care Pro team for the Lankfords’ franchise, a member of a highly successful network founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska. The Home Instead network is the world’s leading provider of in-home care services for older adults, with more than 1,200 independently owned and operated franchises that provide care throughout the United States and 13 other countries. It’s easy to see that Dawn embodies Home Instead’s guiding principles of “Build Trust, Take the Lead and Share Your Heart.”
All Home Instead CAREGivers are screened, trained, bonded and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (336) 789-4472 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
