Care Pro Nicole Bonded with Client Over Shared Medical Interests
For Nicole Mirabelli, one of the benefits of working as a Home Instead® Care Professional is the opportunity to soak in the rich stories from clients, who often are living history books and are enduring personalities who overcame rugged challenges to reach their golden years.
One of Nicole’s first clients was a retired cardiologist who was struggling during the end stages of congestive heart failure. “He was known to be a difficult client,” Nicole recalled, “but who could blame him? He knew exactly how his body was failing, and his illness forced him to retire too early from a career that he loved.”
The client was bitterly discontented with his lot in life and had no problem taking it out on the Care Pros. Nicole, who has a medical background as a Certified Nursing Assistant and a Registered Pharmacy Technician while also taking pre-med classes, found a way to bond with the client. “After some time,” Clearwater’s July Care Pro of the Month said, “I began to talk to him about medicine. I told him I wanted to apply to medical school, which seemed to spark an interest. He spent hours explaining the various procedures he had performed in the catheterization laboratory and told me funny stories about medical school, which was so cool.”
Nicole was with the client on the night he passed away. He did not have a do-not-resuscitate order (DNR), so when he went into cardiac arrest, Nicole performed CPR until the paramedics arrived. His wife witnessed the night’s events and was distressed. While the paramedics worked on her husband, Nicole sat with his wife, while holding the couple’s white toy poodle so she wouldn’t get hurt in the shuffle.
Nicole said: “I talked his wife through everything. She later told me she was thankful I was there because she said, ‘You knew what to do.’ The truth is, I didn’t really know what to do until it all happened. An innate instinct came over me, and I found I was in my element. That experience solidified my interest in becoming a doctor, and I feel as if it was my client’s last lesson to me about medicine.”
One of Nicole’s other clients during her first couple of years with Home Instead of Clearwater was a woman in her early 90s. “We had so much in common, and it almost felt as if I was looking into my own future when I visited her,” Nicole said. “We had the perfect routine. We looked forward to our nights together, and we quickly became best friends.”
Toward the end of their time together, after about two years, the client’s atrial fibrillation got so bad that she could barely walk a few steps without getting out of breath. “One night when I wasn’t there,” Nicole recalled, “she fell and suffered a spiral fracture in her femur. She made it through surgery, started rehab, and things were looking OK.”
Nicole added: “Then, a catastrophe came out of nowhere when the client ended up with renal failure. That’s when she chose hospice. I visited her as much as I could in those last several weeks. She passed away on my mom’s birthday in November 2021, which was a day I’ll likely never forget. Every year since, I reach out to my client’s daughter to let her know how much I still think about her mom. She was truly the best!”
When the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, Nicole was asked to care for a bed-bound “VIP” client who was at an assisted living facility. Until that point, Nicole had never had a client who required as much care as he did, so she was nervous when she accepted the assignment. “I’m so glad I did. This gentleman was so accomplished, and I admired him very much,” Nicole said.
The client had been an Air Force pilot during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War before working in the Air Force Security Group at the Pentagon for the last six years of his career. Nicole said: “I am not a history buff, but I thoroughly enjoyed listening to ‘The Colonel’s’ myriad of adventures. He was awe-inspiring and being around him, I could tell I was in the presence of greatness.”
Nicole added: “To top it all off, he was so incredibly gracious and appreciative for my help and the help of his other Care Pros. I’m sure being confined to a bed was very difficult for someone of his stature, but he did it with such dignity.”
For Nicole and her fellow Care Pros, touching lives impacts their souls, whether they are providing physical help such as light housekeeping, meal preparation, medication reminders or personal care or if they are offering emotional support in a companionship role.
All Home Instead Care Professionals are screened, trained and insured. For inquiries about employment, please call (727) 799-1400 or apply online. For further information about Home Instead, visit our website.
