By Brian Ojanpa
The Free Press
NORTH MANKATO —
Donna Nelson doesn’t think of herself as saintly, nor as someone possessing Mother Teresa-like largesse.
She simply regards caring for her 93-year-old father 24/7 as her rightful lot in life, regardless of the yeoman time commitment and quasi-cloistered lifestyle it involves.
Each day the divorced mother of five tends to Raymond Brunz in his North Mankato home. He suffers from congenital heart failure and sundry other afflictions, but he’s living out his life in his own abode, which is the whole point of Nelson’s exercise.
Here’s why:
Several years ago she would visit her mother Irma in a nursing home, accompanied by her father. She said she couldn’t handle those visits.
Nothing against nursing homes, but that’s not what she wanted for her mother and her increasingly frail father.
“So it became my mission to have them at home. It was so rewarding to see the happiness on their faces. They’d sit in the living room and hold hands in the afternoon,” she said wistfully.
Irma Brunz died two years ago, but Nelson continues to provide in-home around-the-clock care for her father as a participant in Consumer Directed Community Support, a government-funded program that allows families to provide sustained and encompassing care to family members in the comfort of their homes.
A film crew sent by Boston College conducted interviews in the home Wednesday for eventual use as a website teaching tool for the college’s social work program.
Interviewed along with Nelson was Nicollet County Public Health Nurse Mary Hildebrandt, who supervises the local in-home care program.
She said she initially had reservations about the program, wondering if caregivers could be prudent stewards of their allotted budgets and fretting that such a demanding care regimen would lead to burnout.
Those concerns have been allayed, she said.
“We’ve found that people are very diligent with the financial aspect. We haven’t seen any abuses.”
Moreover, the program works with families to ensure that caregivers get breaks to avoid burnout.
“A family really needs to be invested in the program, and they must realize this is a long-term commitment in caring for parents,” Hildebrandt said.
She said she had doubts that Nelson could handle her mother’s care following her stint in the nursing home.
“But she did an excellent job. It brought the family back together, and Donna and her dad didn’t have to worry about visiting her every day. This situation has been successful thanks to Donna. She has really committed to the program.”
Under the joint state and federal program, participating families receive yearly budget funds that are used for care expenses — traditional and otherwise.
In Nelson’s case, money has been used not only to make the home handicapped accessible but to see to her father’s mental well-being as well. Nelson hired a person to routinely come to the home to play the piano for him, a favorite pastime formerly performed by his wife.
It might be said that Nelson, who retired 10 years ago from her job as an airline gate agent in San Diego, has embarked on another career not of her choosing but as her calling.
“It’s an honor for me to do this.”
And, she suggests, it won’t stop when her father passes on. She said she’d like to continue to provide intensive in-home care for other elderly people.
