By Dubravka Kolumbic-Cortese | Correspondent

For many, a person’s home is their sanctuary – a safe, familiar place – but for homebound seniors with health issues and financial woes, being able to remain within the comfort of their homes can mean even more, affording them dignity, a fundamental need at a time when much of their independence may be waning.

The desire to continue to live independently, however, comes with a price – a price much of the aging population cannot afford. That’s where organizations such as the Diocese’s Mount Carmel Guild come in. For 75 years, the nonprofit has been providing free, in-home nursing care to Mercer County seniors older than 65 who don’t qualify for Medicaid.

Home Health Nursing Program Director Corinne Janoska, a registered nurse, along with fellow nurse Gina Breth currently cares for 62 homebound seniors.

“Many of them are at or below poverty level,” Janoska said. “But they are short of being able to qualify for Medicaid.

“Most of them don’t leave the home,” she continued. “For the most part, they are homebound. Sometimes they don’t even have family to come and take them out, so they are really isolated.”

For the past year, Rose Parziale, 85, has not ventured outside the quaint ranch in Trenton that she and her disabled son have called home for more than 50 years. Parziale suffers from a host of health issues, such as diabetes, high cholesterol and, most recently, mild dementia. She relies on Janoska to line up her pills for the week.

“If I had to do it, I’d go crazy,” Parziale said.

Parziale also worries what would happen to her son if she had to leave her home. “I like it here,” she said. “I can do what I want. When you are in an apartment, you have too many bosses. You can’t do the things you can do at home.”

Parziale is part of what appears to be an overlooked population of seniors who don’t seem to fit neatly into a health care category. They don’t qualify for Medicaid or any of the extra services it provides, yet they are not financially stable enough to secure the health and home care they require to continue living independently. And living independently may be key to their survival.

Dignity of a Home

Janoska said she has seen time and again how a move to a nursing home can often signal the beginning of a senior’s downward spiral. Some seniors are still living in the homes in which they were raised. Moving from comfortable and familiar surroundings to a strange, new place can be jarring in itself, but for a senior with health issues, it can be soul crushing. Which is why allowing them the dignity of remaining in their homes, she said, is a priceless service.

“People want to stay in their homes,” Janoska said. “When they go into the nursing home, they don’t last long. That’s why our program is so critical.”

She said many of the seniors the guild serves can barely afford basic living expenses. “Some have air conditioning, some don’t. Some have air but can’t afford to pay the electric bill. A lot of the homes we go into are hot. They might put (the air) on for us, but they turn it off as soon as we leave.”

The guild’s services often go beyond nursing. Unable to leave their homes for a variety of reasons, many seniors are unable to pick up prescriptions or groceries. Because they can’t afford in-home help, many chores as simple as laundry also become daunting. Janoska said one of the guild’s clients can no longer navigate her basement stairs with laundry in tow, so she asks a local utility worker for help.

“We don’t just do our visits,” Janoska stressed. “We’ll bring them food; we’ll pick up their prescriptions.”

For example, Breth brings orange juice on a regular basis to one of her patients. Janoska makes special trips to deliver bouquets when the guild receives a donation of fresh flowers. 

“You need those two pieces to stay in a home,” Janoska said. “We provide the nursing,” but, “they need a home health aide to help with personal care and housekeeping, laundry, food shopping. There’s just not enough services for that.”

Helping Hands

One local volunteer group is trying to help. Janoska said she often calls on Interfaith Caregivers of Greater Mercer County, a group of more than 350 trained volunteers from various parishes who help the homebound with daily chores such as grocery shopping, doctors’ visits, paperwork and bills.

“If we had more home health aide services in the home, these people would be safer, and they would be well taken care of,” Janoska said. “They sometimes survive in filth because they can’t clean it themselves.”

Thanks to donations and grants, Mount Carmel Guild is able to accept every patient referred to its program. Most of the referrals, she said, come from health care services such as Holy Redeemer HomeCare and Mercer Home Health Care after seniors exhaust their allotted weeks of care.

“A lot of times, if it wasn’t for us, and there was a need, they would have nobody,” Janoska said.

Last year, for example, a local cardiologist began referring his homebound patients who are on the heart medication Coumadin to the guild.

“Transportation is a huge problem,” Janoska said, explaining that her patients cannot afford private transportation services, and the county’s transportation service is stretched thin. “By us coming into the home, we test it [Coumadin], we call the cardiologist’s office and speak to the Coumadin nurse, and we get to change the Coumadin right then and there when we change the pill box. It’s huge, because if they were going out to get their bloodwork done and wait three days for the results, then we’d have to go back again and change it.”

Personal Connections

Many of the guild’s patients don’t have family involved in their lives, so often, the nurse’s visit is the only face-to-face contact they have on a regular basis.

“We’re sometimes their only family,” Janoska said. “They grow very attached to us, and us to them, as well.

That’s evident when Parziale talks about the impact Janoska and the guild’s services have had on her quality of life. The guild, for example, is working on securing her a wheelchair and ramp so she can be more mobile.

She said the small, thoughtful gestures are often as important as the health care provided, immediately mentioning a special trip Janoska made to her home to deliver a bouquet of flowers.

“If it wasn’t for [Corinne], I don’t know what I’d do,” Parziale said. “I can’t explain. She is doing all she can for me.”