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NAVIGATING MEDICAL CARE Patient Advocates Provide Care and Assistance for Those Who Need Help
Certified geriatric care manager Jeannean Sabatina has been caring for Ralph Iacuessa for more than two years.
SAM NALVEN
By Sandy Miller
nn Lewis fondly remembers the father of her childhood—a strong, proud man who headed up the buildings and grounds department at a college in Massachusetts. Ralph Iacuessa had a passion for sports and was an avid golfer, water skier, snow skier, handball player and ice skater. He loved spending time with Lewis and her brother, Bob. He built them a double swing in their yard and a sail fish to use on summer vacations in New Hampshire. Sundays were the best, Lewis recalls. Sundays were all about afternoon drives and ice cream. When their parents retired, they moved across the country to bask in the warm sunshine in Arizona. All seemed fine until the phone call came. “It is time to take care of us,” Lewis says her father told her brother. When her brother arrived at his parents’ home, things were even worse than he and Lewis had imagined. Their parents weren’t eating right. They would pick up their prescriptions and throw them, unused, into a kitchen drawer. Their dad came home one day and there was a scrape down the side of his car. He couldn’t remember how it happened.
Lewis and her brother realized their parents needed more help than they could give them. That’s when they found Jeannean Sabatina, a certified geriatric care manager and owner of With Love, Jeannean, a care management agency. “I can’t even tell you how she charmed my dad and mom,” Lewis says. “It was wonderful.” When their mom died two years ago, Sabatina was there to console him. Today, she continues to care for their dad, now 96 years old and living in an assisted nursing facility. She takes him to doctor and dentist appointments and keeps track of his medical records and bills. She makes sure he has all the right medications and has a nurse monitor them. Sabatina keeps in constant contact with Lewis and her brother, updating them on their father’s health and wellbeing. When Lewis and her brother travel to Arizona to visit their father, they always see Sabatina. “There is no way that Bob or I could give the life that dad has without Jeannean,” Lewis says. Sabatina is just one of many who have joined a relatively new profession of ...continues on page 24
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