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You can also mail a donation to 208 Old Mill Rd, Martinsburg, WV 25401. Please write Annual Giving in the memo.
Kristie will tell you frankly that she doesn’t know where she’d be without Panhandle Home Health. She has a unique perspective because she’s been employed by Panhandle since January 2018 as a field nurse and been their patient on several occasions since then.
In April 2019, Kristie began a battle with colon cancer. It’s required multiple surgeries and chemotherapy and Panhandle’s assistance with colostomy and wound care. The foe she took on in December 2020, COVID-19, was even tougher and caused her to be intubated on Christmas Eve and ventilated six days. Released after a month’s hospital stay, Kristie returned home in January 2021 on oxygen, unable to stand, and “with oxygen tubing everywhere.”
Kristie explains that for the next two months Panhandle’s caregivers helped her navigate her “hardest recovery” and regain the ability to walk to the bathroom, conquer steps, sit at the table with her family, and cook a meal. Moreover, their occupational and physical therapists taught Kristie’s family to use assistive devices and techniques that promoted her independence, ensuring her progress when they were not on-site.
Kristie returned to work full-time at the end of March, finished chemo in September, and is currently completing her last round of testing. She is thankful being “in the right place at the right time” connected her with the Panhandle family, who’ve supported her as an employee, by enabling an appropriate home/life balance and checking on her husband and children when she’s been hospitalized, and as a client, by providing the care and encouragement essential to improving her health.
