Wanda Juraschek faced three major challenges as a family caregiver. When she was finished caring for her late mother, she decided to help others. With a vast amount of family caregiving experience and tapping into a deep reservoir of spiritual inspiration, Wanda joined Home Instead® of Martinsburg in September 2021. In April 2022, she was honored as the award-winning franchise’s Care Professional of the Month.
About 10 years ago, Wanda’s mother underwent emergency brain surgery to remove a non-malignant meningioma tumor that had grown so large it was life-threatening. Wanda’s mother recovered fairly well but was never quite the same. Over time, her health slowly deteriorated, and she required additional care. Wanda said: “My father, who is an excellent caregiver, handled her care for years, but for the last three years, he hired professional caregivers for weeknights and eventually for weekdays. I served as my mother’s weekend family caregiver.”
Wanda added: “It was a great honor and privilege to care for my mother in her last years and through hospice, so when I finished my position as a parish administrator at an Episcopal church, I wanted to be able to use all the skills I’d learned through my varied experiences as a family caregiver and my love of people to help others.”
Wanda’s compassionate care for her mother wasn’t her first family caregiving challenge. “The greatest joy of my life was raising my five wonderful children. It was a tremendous shock when our second child was diagnosed at age 17 with a rare childhood cancer, alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. That thrust us into the unfamiliar world of cancer,” explained Wanda, who quickly learned about the rare disease. Only about 500 people are diagnosed each year in the United States, and most of them are children or adolescents.
Wanda noted: “Treatment consisted of surgeries and a year of weekly potent chemotherapy, severely impacting our son’s high school senior year. One chemo drug was so toxic, he had to be admitted to the hospital every four weeks for three to seven days to have it administered and begin recovery from it. I learned many more caregiving skills from that year-long experience of caring for my son and am delighted to report he is a childhood cancer survivor 23 years later.”
During Wanda’s most recent family caregiving episode, she provided for her severely disabled sister when her sister’s special residential school sent the students home for health safety reasons when COVID-19 hit. Her sister was with Wanda for 11 months. “I was able to accommodate it while working for the church primarily from home,” Wanda said.
With a humble confidence she could help seniors and also drawing on her spiritual faith to be able to do so, Wanda went to work for the Home Instead franchise that serves West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. “I find Jesus’ instructions to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ to be very sound advice, which I try to follow with all of my clients,” Wanda said.
Wanda always has had a heart for helping others. “I learned the art of caregiving by following the excellent example of both of my parents as they cared for my severely disabled sister, who is six years younger than I,” Wanda said. “At age 9, I began volunteering annually with the American Red Cross in their summer programs for children with disabilities.”
Senior care also was on the horizon for Wanda at a young age. “Being the first grandchild on both sides of my family I had spent a great deal of time with my elderly grandparents and was blessed to have known one of my great-grandmothers. I always enjoyed listening to their stories – it was truly living history!” she said.
As a teenager, Wanda gathered some of her like-minded friends to create a successful babysitting service for families who often found it difficult to find sitters for their children with disabilities. Wanda explained further, “It was a natural progression for me to pursue a degree in special education in college and teach afterward.”
After majoring in special education and securing her college degree, Wanda taught children with learning disabilities in grades ranging from kindergarten to eighth grade for several years. Then she shifted course in her work journey. “Pursuing my love of history,” Wanda said, “I held several different positions at a National Historic Trust property in Northern Virginia for many years. For the past 15 years before joining Home Instead, I served as a parish administrator for an Episcopal church, assisting the rector, vestry and parishioners.”
After retiring from her church job in Purcellville, Virginia, Wanda decided she wanted her next job to be more “hands on.” She said: “I found Home Instead online and was impressed with what I learned of its mission. What I like most about my job is getting to know my clients – their history and their interests. I always learn something from each experience.”
Wanda also described her job fulfillment this way: “It is deeply satisfying to know I may have made my clients’ days a little brighter, their challenges a little easier and their lives a bit more comfortable during our time together. It brings me joy. To be successful as a caregiver, I’d say you need to have patience, flexibility, a sense of humor, and love of people first and foremost.”
Wanda always searches for ways to her clients’ hearts and minds. “I really enjoy discovering what a person’s interests are and joining in however and whenever I can to make it possible for them to experience them – whether it’s gardening, birding, cooking, history, card games, Wordle, music and other activities, and I love sharing a laugh with them!” she said.
“One of my clients was a gourmet cook. While I love to cook, I am no gourmet cook. My client patiently instructs me, and I try my best. What a sense of accomplishment there is when she approves, and we laugh when she tactfully lets me know I failed. If that is the case, her review is, ‘Well, I wouldn’t order it if it was on the menu.’ I’ve cooked a lot of things now that I would never have cooked before. Like I said, I always learn something in this job.”
