Jerry Reichert went in for a routine endoscopy for stomach pain, and according to his doctor, everything looked normal. When he returned home, he took a shower. “I was feeling cold, and I was feeling chilled, so I took a very hot shower.”
What happened next, Jerry barely remembers: “I fell and then I hit my head on the back of the wall and fell on my back and vomited. I was totally out of it.”
Thank goodness his wife, Catherine, was home and heard him. When she saw him lying on the bathroom floor, she immediately called 911. An ambulance arrived not long after, and he went to the hospital.
The emergency room doctors discovered multiple issues after running various tests. Firstly, they found he had a concussion from the fall. Then they discovered he had suffered a minor stroke. They also discovered the root cause of his abdominal pain: gallstones. He ended up getting surgery to remove his gallbladder which kept him in the hospital for a total of nine and a half days.
His discharge was contingent upon him getting home health care. He chose the VNA because Catherine had volunteered for the VNA & Hospice Foundation’s annual Golf-A-Thon fundraiser for several years, including four years as the event’s Co-Captain.
Jerry had VNA home health once a week for two months. His care team included a physical therapist, who he was grateful for since he had lost 18 pounds while in the hospital and his legs had atrophied. “Some of the things that they did right off the bat was to give orthostatic hypertension exercises that I had to do constantly on a daily basis, which really helped because of the weight I lost in the hospital and the muscles in my thighs that atrophied. The instructions that I got from that the VNA helped tremendously to build up strength.”
He was particularly grateful for one exercise that addressed his hamstrings. “My hamstring hurt so much when I came home from the hospital that I couldn’t sleep at night because there was a constant pain. Eventually I would just fall asleep, but I would wake up every couple of hours and so forth, and so the physical therapy was terrific,” recalled Jerry. “One of the physical therapists gave me the best exercise for my hamstrings: you put something in between your legs and keep your knees locked and go down and attempt to touch your toes.”
Jerry also noted the ease with which it was to schedule his appointments with his VNA home health team. “The scheduling was absolutely terrific, and they were flexible. Sometimes they came at 11, sometimes they came at 12. They always they called so I knew when someone was going to come”
There was one person on his care team he particularly clicked with, Wesley. “He was a male registered nurse, and he showed patience, integrity and dedication – more than most medical personnel that I have had experience with during this three months episode that I’ve been living with,” said Jerry. “Even the postmortem that I did with Wesley, which is basically your discharge instructions, was handled extremely professionally. I have nothing but compliments about the service that I got from VNA.”
He also enjoyed VNA’s Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), also known as telehealth, which was part of his care. RPM involves electronic devices that are placed in the patient’s home and connect through a phone line. Thanks to the VNA & Hospice Foundation RPM is an added benefit offered to all VNA Home Health patients free of charge. The service and equipment is paid for through grants received from United Way and the Planseon Foundation helping us to care for our patients more comprehensively. Every day, the patient must interact with the device by answering questions for symptom analysis and take readings such as weight, blood pressure, pulse rate and oxygen levels. That information is transmitted and examined by a clinical team for regular monitoring. “It was absolutely terrific. If you didn’t do what you had to do by either 10:00 or 10:30 in the morning it beeped, it lets you know. That’s also very important because your blood pressure and your oxygen levels do vary throughout the day depending upon what you’re doing, so they want it to be a constant history of when things are being done,” said Jerry. “It made me feel more secure. If I was feeling a bit dizzy one day or my blood pressure went up, within an hour I got a phone call from VNA asking me how I was doing. I have nothing but compliments to give about the entire VNA process. It was wonderful. VNA gave me the most outstanding care.”
