I recently went to a patient’s home for lower extremity care and evaluation. After initially introducing myself and a little bit of history taking, we got to the problem at hand. The patient was an end-stage cancer patient who was home-bound. She was suffering from terribly thickened painful toe nails, and was unable to cut them herself or with the aid of her home health-aid. After I went ahead and cut her nails, she started sobbing. She stated that “there has to be a God, to send someone like you to help me.” Even though, I felt that I had only done my Job; the warmth and appreciation I received from this patient was something I will remember forever.

Home visits were the norm up to 30 years ago, and I feel that they are still an important part of patient care when required. This is another way that we can be proactive in providing the best care to our patients.

By Dr. Varun (Ben) Gujral

Tags: ankle care, foot care, home health care, painful toe nails, toe nails

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 12:42 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.