Her Personal In-Home Bodyguard
This Waretown resident relies on telemonitoring technology and highly skilled nurses for both her in-home health care assistance and her sense of security, all in an effort to remain independent at home.

Wanting nothing more than to remain in her cherished home, Odyllia Miklausen found the answer she needed in the form of Meridian At Home’s Clinical Connections Solution and her friend and nurse Marian Estabrook.

When 88-year-old Odyllia Miklausen from Waretown was sent home from the hospital after being diagnosed with congestive heart failure, her Meridian At Home nurse suggested that she look into a brand-new service that could help her maintain her independence and quality of life at home, where she lived by herself, with her pet conure parrot, Willie.

"At first, I was a little apprehensive about how I could truly benefit from an in-home monitoring technology, but after I realized that I needed to do whatever it was going to take to stay in this home, which I helped build back in 1950, I decided I would give it a try and see how it went," Odyllia confides. "I never thought that this service would actually save my life." Well, that’s exactly what Meridian At Home’s new "Clinical Connections Solution" home monitoring program did for this grateful woman.

Cause for Alarm
On a rainy Friday in September 2006, Odyllia transmitted her blood pressure, weight, oxygen level, and heart rate readings through her phone line to Meridian At Home telemonitor nurse Marian Estabrook, R.N., just like she’d been doing every day since June. The transmission of her vital signs and other key measures would always be followed up 15 minutes later with a phone call from Marian, who’d go over the results with Odyllia, but who would also spend some time socializing with her — asking how she was feeling, confirming that she’d taken her medications, chatting about family and friends. The connection’s not just medical, but personal.

But on this particular day, Marian noticed a change in some of Odyllia’s vital signs; specifically, her blood pressure and heart rate numbers were much lower than usual.

This time when Marian made her routine call at 10:15 a.m., Odyllia told her that she felt dizzy and light-headed. By 10:30, Marian observed that Odyllia was slurring some of her words and her voice was weakening.

"When I asked Odyllia how she was feeling, she kept repeating that she felt really tired and just wanted to close her eyes and rest," Marian recalls. "I wanted to make sure she remained awake, so I kept calling her name so she would respond and keep talking to me. I also was able to have Odyllia transmit one more set of vital signs.…By eleven o’clock, her blood pressure and heart rate were even lower than they’d been just 45 minutes earlier."

Meridian At Home Takes Over Following receipt of Odyllia’s second batch of dangerously low measurements, Marian continued to keep her patient conscious and coherent as she simultaneously contacted her nurse manager, Sandra Giorgianna, R.N., CRNN, who took over behind the scenes. Sandra immediately called 911 to summon emergency response attention for Odyllia.

The police arrived first and administered oxygen therapy until the paramedics came to transport Odyllia to the nearest hospital. Sandra then proceeded to contact Odyllia’s daughter, Pat Kingman, who lives in Bricktown and who ended up arriving at the hospital before Odyllia herself did via ambulance. Odyllia remembers thinking to herself, How in the world did she find out so fast?

"I couldn’t believe she was there before I was. I remember my daughter saying to me, ‘What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into this time, Mom?’ " After a short hospital stay, during which she was observed closely and her vitals returned to normal, Odyllia was able to return home, where she and Willie are now faring very well.

Customized Solutions Package
As Odyllia’s incident illustrates, when Meridian At Home’s highly advanced systems and highly skilled nurses monitor the health status of our patients on a daily basis, there’s an added level of security and peace of mind for all concerned parties. As Odyllia puts it, "It’s like having a bodyguard in the house to protect me all the time."

The easy-to-use, cost-effective Clinical Connections Solution program that Odyllia’s talking about uses innovative technology to remotely connect at-home clients to designated members of Meridian At Home’s health team. When notable changes in one’s condition are identified, one of our registered nurses will either call the patient directly or reach out to the appropriate caregiver or doctor.

Meridian At Home also offers many other services in our full range of "Customized Solutions," which can be used independently of or in conjunction with the home monitoring program that has so drastically changed Odyllia’s life and the lives of many others in a similar situation.

You’ll Never Want to Leave Home
Odyllia has completely put to rest any initial doubts she had about the value of this program: "I’m never leaving this house, and I’m never giving up the Meridian At Home telemonitoring service," she exclaims. "I’d be six feet under if not for this technology." She goes on to make it quite clear that "it wasn’t just the technology that saved me; it was the combination of the technology and a highly skilled, caring, and compassionate nurse like Marian that saved me." Odyllia concludes by saying that she supposes Willie the parrot might also have been capable of saving her on that rainy day last September, "but I haven’t trained him to make 911 emergency phone calls yet!"

– Chris Teasdale