State-Journal.com - Help at home

Photo By Kelly MackeyFloyd “Happy” Terrell gets help sitting in his wheelchair from Physical Therapist Assistant Thomas Hayden and home health aide Crystal Middleton after standing for about three minutes.

Floyd Terrell is happy at home with his wife, Mary Helen. In fact, call him Happy, because that’s his nickname.

He’s home because of the services offered through Franklin County Home Healthcare and its providers.

It’s part of the Franklin County Health Department with the goal of helping people like Happy stay at home after severe illnesses or because of physical limitations.

Happy, 67, is one of the 200 clients who has chosen home as opposed to nursing home care. According to Nurse Administrator Karen Weller, all their clients are medically fragile, eligible for nursing home care and are under doctors’ orders.

“He was in excellent health until he was 45,” explains Mary Helen.

Happy worked for 32 years as an engineer with the division of bridges in the Kentucky Department of Transportation when he began having frontal lobe seizures. In May 1998, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

But more was to come, including a knee replacement, and in 2006 three broken bones in his ankle, which required four surgeries in two years. During this time, Happy was in and out of the hospital for various medical conditions – most recently for three weeks.

Also in the last year he was diagnosed with small cell leukemia.

The oncologist at University of Kentucky Medical Center told Mary Helen to her dismay, “I have thoroughly read all your husband’s records and he has ‘already lived his nine lives’. That is something neither Happy nor I wanted to have said to us in that manner.”

They built a house to accommodate Happy’s medical needs on land they owned and moved from their farmhouse on McCann Road several hundred yards away.

It would take more than a house that was wheelchair accessible, open on one floor with walk-in showers; it would also take skilled caregivers.

“With Happy because of his extended stays we take three steps backward every time he is hospitalized and it then takes five or 10 steps forward to help him realize his goal of walking again like before he suffered the setback from his broken ankle bones,” Home Health physical therapist Thomas Hayden said. “It is a slow process.”

While there are several in-home health care agencies in Frankfort, the Franklin County agency is the only one that is not-for-profit and funded with taxpayer dollars.

Those dollars and the money from Medicare and Medicaid plus the health department budget is earmarked for patient care and the staff it takes to operate.

“There is never any money to do anything simple or kind for these people,” said Shannan Rome, social worker for Home Health.

“Our nurses and aides often take money out of their own pockets just to help these folks or provide them a little cheer – to let them know someone cares because many of these folks have no one,” said Rome.

The staff even participates in dressed down days on Fridays and pays $2 for the privilege of wearing jeans.

“That money goes into a small fund that we often use to pay an occasional bill or co-pay when their money is tight or just to buy something the patient needs like a pill organizer,” explained Rome.

Relief came to the staff and providers when Home Healthcare learned this week it is one of 15 recipients nationwide of a two-year grant from the Home Instead Foundation.

That’s just what the nurses and staff ordered.

Ironically it came just as the agency is winding down its National Home Healthcare recognition month.

Earlier this week Weller, who has overseen the program for the past eight years, received more good news when she was recognized as the state’s 2009 Home Care Administration Professional.

The grant money will allow the nurses and staff to provide personal touches for the clients.

“We listed two goals in our grant application,” said Rome. “The first was to be able to provide a few necessities that often our clients cannot afford – like the medicine organizers. The second was to establish an outreach fund for personal touches that so often many of these people are lacking.

“In the past it either came out of our pockets or through our dress down fund, but now we have the money to purchase a greeting card for a birthday, or even to pick them up a breakfast before we go to their homes.”

Weller and Rome learned of the grant availability from one of their corporate partners – Home Instead.

David Owen is the local owner of Home Instead, a national company that works in tandem with the agency to provide senior care.

“We fill in the gaps where Home Health cannot,” Owen said explaining, its role is provide cooking, cleaning or any other services a client may not be able to do.

“That includes everything – even feeding the cat.”

But the services of Home Instead are not part of the Medicaid or Medicare and must be paid by the client.

“Often our clients have long-term care insurance or the means to pay for our services,” Owen said. “We also have staff that works with other revenue sources like the Bluegrass Area Health District or the Veterans Administration to help defray some of the costs.”

Owen and his staff get in on the act of helping Home Health especially when it comes doing the Santas for Seniors program at Christmas.

Weller explained that many of their low income clients have a bleak holiday.

“Often they have no Christmas unless we provide it. Those gifts are mostly things we know they need like a bottle of Tylenol, socks, a particular vitamin, paper towels and tissues,” said Weller.

“We may just put together a group and go sing Christmas carols to them,” said Rome. “Anything to make a holiday brighter for people unable to get out.”

Owen and Hope Community Church help with the gifts and often deliver them to the clients.

“Even the teenage youth group at the church gets in on the act wrapping every gift,” said Owen.

It was recognizing this need for Franklin County Home Healthcare that Owen suggested the grant as a means to defray many of the out of pocket costs.

“Let’s face it,” Weller said, “Our staff does not make a lot of money but is always willing to go that extra mile for the people they serve.”

In Happy’s case, he said his Home Healthcare workers are “just fine” and gave a thumbs-up to their services.

Mary Helen said it is because of Home Healthcare that she is able to keep Happy in their home.

“Happy has been through so much and without these folks, I certainly could not do all the things these nurses, aides and the therapist do. They are a blessing in our lives.”