Serving Our Seniors Magazine: January - March 2024

Meet Tina Sluga, Health Care Advocate Trainer. She is here to help YOU learn how to get the most out of your health care appointments. As an advocate for people of older age, Serving Our Seniors has long preached that the passive patient receives less optimal health care and knowledge is power. Tina is developing an inter-active, entertaining, small-group training program. It is designed specifically for those aged 60 and better. Its purpose: to develop basic patient knowledge; improve a patient’s confidence to ask informed questions about their health; know how to take an active role in your health care; know what expectations a patient should have of their health care provider; know what the health care appointment should accomplish. To help Tina learn what older adults are struggling with most, she is making herself available to accompany a limited number of clients to various health care appointments. Her role is to be another set of listening ears and to observe where patients have difficulty understanding what the doctor/nurse practitioner is saying. If you are attending your health care visits alone and wish you had a supportive listener to be of assistance, we can help. For more information, call Serving Our Seniors 419-624-1856. Ask for Tina. Ralph, age 76, a proud U.S. Veteran, lives in a mobile home. One Thursday evening at 11:00 p.m., he was walking down the hall and his leg went through the floor. “There was a soft spot in the floor and I didn’t know it was weak.” He was able to get his leg out and he drug himself to the kitchen at the front of the house. “I laid there until 11:30 a.m. on Friday, with a broken femur.” When he heard a knock at the door, he knew it was the Meals on Wheels Volunteer. He yelled, “Call 911! I fell.” The Volunteer, Pat, did exactly that. Ralph said, “That Meals on Wheels Volunteer stayed out there and waited until the rescue squad came and made sure I was going to be OK.” Pat said, she noticed something was wrong. When she arrived, Ralph and his dog were not there to greet her. “I knocked and no one answered. I heard a faint voice, ‘Call Meet Serving Our Seniors NEW Health Care Advocate Trainer More than a Meals on Wheels Volunteer: She Was His Hero 911. I have fallen.’ This was my first experience helping anyone like that. There was no way I was going to leave him until I knew the rescue squad got to the right home to help him.” She said, “Ralph is a wonderful gentleman and I was glad to help.” Had it not been for the Meals on Wheels Program and volunteers like Pat, Ralph could have been laying at death’s door and not his front door. Would you please consider volunteering? Pat said, “It is a good feeling to give someone a smile at the door and a meal to eat.” Delivering Meals on Wheels is a great way to meet new people, too. To volunteer call May McClure, Director of Senior Enrichment, Erie County Senior Center 419-626-2560. Kind and caring people, like Pat, are desperately needed throughout Erie County. 11