Category: Seek On Blog (Consumer)

Fifty-five years ago, when Nancy and Dick bought 40 acres of land with their best friends, they never imagined leaving. The two young couples built homes next door to each other and raised their families together. They cut their own firewood for heat in the winter, grew their own vegetables, built a barn, and raised […]

Ethel has been a nurse for over 50 years, 10 of them with Lifespark. Years ago, when she worked with us, she said, “There’s a beauty about being over 50 that people don’t realize – you can draw from years of experience on many things that seem common sense to you now but didn’t come […]

The modern hospice movement was founded nearly 60 years ago, yet even today, hospice suffers from an image problem that often prevents people from taking advantage of this life-enhancing health care benefit.  Cindy Crawford, BSN, RN, Clinical Liaison, Lifespark Hospice, is passionate about debunking hospice myths and helping clients and families understand that hospice can […]

One Sunday morning in early August, Irene woke up with a badly swollen knee. She thought about waiting until Monday to call her Lifespark Nurse Practitioner but was afraid that bacteria from an infected tooth had migrated to her artificial knee joint, something her orthopedic surgeon had warned her about. If left untreated, an infected […]

Read time: 1 min, 50 sec For the past six years, Barb* had been caring for her husband, Carl*, in their home with the support of her sons and caregivers from Lifespark Community Home Care, but she was struggling to keep him out of the hospital. Chronic urinary tract infections (UTIs), treatment for bladder cancer, […]

Read time: 2 minutes “Even though death, loss, and grief are universal experiences, it’s important to remember that there is no universal response to loss, nor is there a set timeframe for grieving—it takes as long as it takes,” said Jackie Bohrer, MSW, LICSW, Lifespark Hospice Bereavement Coordinator/Grief Counselor, a role she helped develop to […]

Before joining Lifespark’s primary care team, Wendy Laine, MD, spent 19 years on the frontlines of emergency medicine. She loved the work, but even before COVID-19 overwhelmed emergency departments and hospitals, the system was breaking down, she said. The result was long waits in crowded waiting rooms swarming with viruses. “When I first started, if […]

I called my primary care for an appointment because I couldn’t move my shoulder, the pain was pretty brutal. Her office staff responded with: “we don’t have any availability, go to the emergency room (ER).” So off I went where I was greeted by a quick triage check-in and a front seat to the ER […]

Read time: 2 minutes Back in 2021, while Bonnie was at the hospital visiting her husband, Bill, she noticed a Lifespark brochure on his nightstand. “I took one look at it and thought, ‘I’ve been a registered nurse for almost 70 years and my daughter, who lives with us, is also a nurse, so why […]

Read time: 2 minutes “We can have the best intake process, the best clinical assessment, the best office operations, the best staffing, but without top-notch caregivers, we will fail our clients every time,” said Tanya Castillo, RN, Director, Community Home Care at Lifespark. “Our caregivers are the eyes and ears of our clinical teams—the bedrock […]