Emeritus Salt Lake focuses on building relationships with residents

Posted on March 6, 2014 by comm5775

Story and photo by IAN SMITH

Emeritus Salt Lake offers care to its residents.

Emeritus Salt Lake offers care to its residents.

Picture yourself as an elder, and you know your time on this earth is decreasing. You know you can no longer take care of yourself. You need assistance. To everyone else, it may be time for a nursing home.

You pack up your stuff. Where did the time go, you keep asking yourself? How did life flash that fast and how has it come to this? You set off in the car that takes you to the home. As you pull up your first impression is that it could work for you. But you still have many questions and not that many answers.

“No one wants to go into a nursing home,” said Anne Palmer Peterson, executive director of the Utah Commission on Aging. The Utah Legislature created the commission in 2005 to address issues related to the fast-growing aging population in the state. Peterson said it is a young state, but it also is the “sixth-fastest aging state in the nation.” Among other things, the commission has studied housing options for older adults. The findings were published in New Trends in Housing for Utah’s Aging Population.

“We want people to be thinking proactively about their futures,” she said.

Even so, it can be difficult to leave all of your memories behind you.

The idea of a “nursing home” isn’t too appealing to many people, though.

Brian Culliton, the executive director at Emeritus Salt Lake at 76 South and 500 East, said people have very different opinions of nursing homes.

Every facility is different, whether it’s a nursing home or assisted living center. Some facilities, like Emeritus, offer help for certain issues residents might be dealing with. Dementia, for example, is taken very seriously at the assisted living facility.

“We provide a family orientation with a caretaker,” Culliton said in a phone interview. “We have a well rounded understanding of what that resident’s day looks like. We want to keep it routine. We have other care providers that will come and talk to give a better understanding of the disease.”

Culliton said the staff and volunteers who work at Emeritus Salt Lake are passionate about the work they do and want nothing more than to help the people they are caring for.

Emeritus Salt Lake is located at 76 South 500 East.

Emeritus Salt Lake is located at 76 South 500 East.

“I’m really passionate about attracting the right [residents],” he said. “It’s that feeling of leaving home if anyone has dementia, you’re leaving your familiar space. You’ve been there for 50-plus years and now you’re going to a new space. It goes back to that care.”

Culliton knows that some older adults are afraid to be alone. But, sometimes that fear prevents people from seeking help.

He said Emeritus Salt Lake aims to offer more than just the borderline help. Staff go above and beyond to help the new residents by developing a personal relationship with them as soon as they walk in the door. Residents are given an orientation and shown around the building.

“With assisted living, every department head goes and introduces themselves and gives them the care that they expect,” Culliton said. “We look at it as kind of like a marriage. Know each other right up front. If we look at the process at the point when somebody applies, we go to their house or hospital and get to know the family immediately and when they move in, we talk about what is best and how to care for the seniors.”

Markel Martinez, a resident assistant at Emeritus Salt Lake, knows how important it is to build relationships. He has had residents find friends at the facility and even fall in love.

“I would want the resident to know that I’m there to help them,” Martinez said. “To be their friend that they can trust and talk to.”

Filed under: Aging, Business, Health & Fitness, Medicine, Mental Health | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

Chandler Hunt and the gift of sight

Posted on December 17, 2013 by comm5775

Story and photos by CALLEN CRENSHAW

How would life be for a person who does not have use of one of their five senses? Can someone with that type of disability live a normal life?

Chandler Hunt is now a senior at the University of Utah.

Chandler Hunt is now a senior at the University of Utah.

From a very young age, Chandler Hunt learned how to do “normal” tasks without the use of one of these senses, his eyes. As a result, Chandler went about his day feeling and listening for social and emotional cues.

Chandler was diagnosed as legally blind at age 5. His father, Bill, had a really difficult time grasping the reality of his son’s disability. The formal term for this condition is called dislocated lenses. The lenses in Chandler’s eyes became more dislocated with time. The timeline for this process depends on the gene itself, which is hereditary.

Bill said that his side of the family produces this gene and every one of his siblings suffers from it. One positive aspect of his son’s diagnosis is the technology factor. “Technology never ceases to amaze me, because Chandler was diagnosed so young doctors have been able to start to reverse his eyesight,” Bill said.

However, he realizes that the condition has made his son learn everything in a different way, a more difficult way. As a father he said his son has been labeled as “different” since he lost his eyesight completely in high school.

Bill Hunt enjoys hiking in Cottonwood Canyon when he visits Chandler in Salt Lake City.

Bill Hunt enjoys hiking in Cottonwood Canyon when he visits Chandler in Salt Lake City.

Chandler spent his childhood participating in monthly doctor visits and adding what he recalled as “what felt like inches to my lenses.” With each of these visits the prescription in his glasses became stronger to the point where he eventually could only see through a small portion of his lenses. Bill said Chandler described the way he sees people as “little specks or dots with fuzziness attached to them.” This was concerning to him as a father.

The next big hurdle in Chandler’s life was his driving test. Although he struggled through school at Cornwall Central High School in California, he was able to get by with the help of many teachers, counselors and friends. But the driving test was something he had to accomplish on his own. He did not pass due to his eyesight. It was then that Bill realized his son needed to see the best surgeon and inquire about the latest technological advancement, LASIK eye surgery.

Chandler began physical therapy for his eyes and began preparing for what would total 19 surgeries. However, the breaking point happened when Chandler participated in a risky surgery that had a small chance of being successful in recovering his vision.

“I was completely against the surgery,” Bill said. In fact, he forbid Chandler to participate in it because it was so risky. “I didn’t think he understood the risk he was taking. If it didn’t work he would lose his eyesight completely, forever.”

This was a risk Chandler wanted to take. When he turned 18 he had the surgery.

He participated in a case study along with 12 other people. Out of that group, he was one of three who had a successful outcome. Although his recovery was two months, Chandler discovered that the surgery had reversed his eyesight and he was now able to learn how to read and write.

Physical Therapist Susan Bateman said in a phone interview that Chandler was one of the “most unique cases I have seen thus far in my practice.”

That is because Chandler is among 3 percent of the population that has the same form of the disability. A much higher percentage of Americans are legally blind due to other causes.

Although Chandler regained his eyesight, other patients like Chloe Hart did not have the same outcome. Hart says she knew the risk she was taking in having the surgery and it was “painfully hard to watch some of the patients receive their eyesight while the rest of us were left blind to some degree.”

Chandler feels bad for other patients like Hart who did not have the same result as he did. However, he believes that God knows what is best for everybody and that he needed the “gift of sight at that point in (his) life.”

Chandler and Bill Hunt enjoy spending time with each other outdoors.

Chandler and Bill Hunt enjoy spending time with each other outdoors.

Chandler is grateful for his eyesight and unlike most people, he does not take it for granted because he knows what it is like to not have it.

“The world is a very beautiful place, and I can say that because for the majority of my life I have not been able to see it,” he said. “But I have experienced it and I have seen what it offers people and that gives me strength. Strength to overcome my newfound challenges and the strength I need to make a difference.”

Filed under: Medicine, People with Disabilities, Profiles | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

The life and success of Kirsten Morrise

Posted on December 5, 2013 by comm5775

Story and slideshow by NATALIE CHRISTENSEN

Meet Kirsten Morrise, her friends and family through photos.
Pierre Robin Syndrome is not a very well-known condition that is found in between one in 8,000 to one in 30,000 children born.

Pierre Robin Syndrome is a condition that comes in three stages, namely a cleft pallet, micrognathia (meaning a smaller jaw) and glossoptosis, an obstruction by the tongue from breathing.

Kirsten Morrise, a resident of Salt Lake City in the Sugar House area, has been dealing with Pierre Robin syndrome from the day she was born.

With her cheery personality and positive attitude, you wouldn’t believe the struggles this 20-year-old has gone through. She has been in and out of hospitals her whole life and  has undergone 40 surgeries. She has struggled with depression, been bullied through school and has overcome some learning struggles.

At a very young age she had a tracheotomy placed on her throat. Not only was this a burden for young Kirsten, but also for her mother Lisa who was taking care of two other children with medical needs.

“Kirsten was very sick and we were basically running an ICU and Timothy (her brother) was bouncing off the walls, and Michael (her brother) needed breathing treatments,” her mother Lisa said. “She was in the hospital 16 times her first year.”

Lisa said it was by the grace of God that she made it through that first year. Even with her two older boys needing help, having a child with a tracheotomy meant she needed to be at Kirsten’s bedside at all times.

When Kirsten had her tracheotomy removed at the age of 1, Lisa was able to return to work while neighbors watched Kirsten. Soon after however, problems started rising again.

“There were days when she couldn’t walk,” Lisa said. “And it was very strange … and things got a lot worse.”

Because of the lack of oxygen to her brain, Kirsten was having seizures which were getting worse and worse. Even with treatment, her seizures weren’t getting any better.

“‘Kirsten is sick get over it,’ was basically the attitude of a lot of professionals had that I talked to,” Lisa said. “But she kept getting sicker and sicker, and it got to the point where she couldn’t sit down on a couch without falling off because she was so out of it.”

As many times as Lisa tried to take Kirsten back to the hospital, they weren’t getting any help.

“And it’s like you’re running into a brick wall,” Lisa said. “It’s the scariest thing in the world to have your child be sick and have people not pay attention to you.”

Finally Kirsten was able to get the treatment but needed more surgeries.

She missed a lot of school because of the surgeries, and her social life wasn’t going very well either. A lot of Kirsten’s friends didn’t know how to treat her because of her surgeries. They saw her as being delicate rather than a normal kid.

“A lot of people don’t know what to say to me, because I’ve been through so much,” Kirsten said. “But I say they’re human. Do I really want them to be fully aware of what I’m experiencing?”

When Kirsten turned 6, she started skiing in Park City with The National Ability Center, a program that helps young kids recognize their strengths and helps build their self-esteem. The National Ability Center allowed Kirsten to participate in downhill skiing, and she had her own instructors to help her.

“My mom got me into skiing to help my upper trunk strength,” Kirsten said. “But as I got older and got better at it, it became not a pursuit (of) something to prove — I’m not delicate — but another activity I could add to my collection of talents I had.”

Kirsten went on in 2009 to win the gold medal in downhill skiing in the Special Olympics in advanced skiing.

Kirsten enjoyed skiing much more than physical therapy, it was more enjoyable and fun, and she could be outdoors. A lot of children with disabilities prefer to have their physical therapy this way, and Kirsten always looks back on the skiing experience with a lot of pride.

In 2005 Kirsten had screws put in her jaw called jaw distractors. The screws were visible on the outside of Kirsten’s face. When the screws were turned it forced her jaw forward so the jaw bone behind it could grow.

When asked if it hurt, she explained, “Yeah, you try getting the bone in your face being gradually moved forward.”

But, she added, “knowing what the end result is supposed to be makes it easier to endure.”

When she was 12, she attended LDS Brighton Girls camp. She enjoyed that summer so much she went back a second time and then finally went back as a helper in the kitchen in 2009 and then worked as the Craft Shack in 2010.

Kirsten loved it so much because the people there didn’t treat her like she was a disabled person. “They treated me like I was a human being,” she said. “There I had a blank slate, no one knew about my past … they let me do everything that everybody else did.”

Even having to wear an oxygen tank on her back as she went hiking her first year, she had fun with the girls telling them she was a cyborg.

If you ask anyone who worked with Kirsten at Brighton Camp a huge grin will come across their face.

Michelle Theurer was one of Kirsten’s good friends who worked at Brighton Camp with her. “It was great she always has something to say,” Theurer said. “So there’s never a quiet moment with her and she’s a really hard worker. Even with her limitations she’ll do whatever she can do.”

Theurer said Kirsten was always positive and was involved. She made things so much more fun because she saw them in a completely different way. “We would have time where we’d just hang out and it would be so fun to tease because she just dishes it right back at you, and she’s really ticklish.”

When Kirsten entered high school at Highland High, she was bullied by students taking her scooter and teasing her, calling her retarded and stupid.

“I have cerebral palsy and I have mood disorders, and I have hypotonia which means low muscle tone,” Kirsten said. “Those things have kind of caused with the bullying because of my posture and people look at me funny and also not being very athletic influenced the bullying.”

While attending high school, Kirsten was also going to college because of how much her surgeries held her back.

Kirsten attended Utah State University, because neither Brigham Young University nor the University of Utah sounded appealing.

“I made a plan to get to college,” Kirsten said. “And even though I got to college late, I had a plan I would get all of my high school work done by a certain time, and I would be able to function well enough to go to college.”

She picked social work as a major because she wanted to help others. “I feel like I have a capacity of empathy and I feel like I can give so much,” Kristen said.

Theurer also attended Utah State with Kirsten.

“Even though she may have challenges,” Theurer said. “She is always quick to realize that others have challenges too. She doesn’t seek for pity, but she does seek to serve others.”

Kirsten is looking toward the surgery that will fix it all. The procedure is called an End to End Anastomosis. Doctors will take out the part of the trachea that is scarred and then sew the ends of her trachea together. She went in early 2013 to Cincinnati to have the surgery done, but her throat wasn’t ready for it. So, on Dec. 10, 2013, she had surgery to advance her upper and lower jaws and tongue.

“Even though I have all these issues, I have a plan for how I’m going to do things and make sure I can do them,” Kirsten said. “I can take care of myself, I can do school, I can go on hikes, just not on big ones, and I’m a gold medalist in downhill skiing. Anything I put my mind to most of the time, I can do.”

Filed under: Medicine, Mental Health, People with Disabilities, Profiles, Science & Technology | Tagged: | Leave a comment »

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