CAREGIVER • SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2019 • 11
PROFESSIONAL CAREGIVER SPOTLIGHT
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Soon after returning to work with
Lunt, 59, she was rewarded again.
When Bailey first started working with
Lunt in April and taking him to physical
therapy, he needed two people assisting
him, on either side, and one person
following behind with a wheelchair in
order to walk.
On Nov. 4, he walked 180 feet and
then walked up stairs and back down
again with only Bailey’s assistance.
“I literally was in tears the first time he
did it,” Bailey said.
“The second time he did it, I did a
dance across the hallway.”
Bailey first applied to be a professional
caregiver about three years ago
and wasn’t sure at the time if she was
qualified.
She didn’t have any formal training,
but she’d cared for her mother
and grandmother through a variety of
ailments and challenges and felt that
caregiving was her calling.
She won her company’s regional
caregiver of the year award in 2018 for
her work with a client who had Alzheimer’s
disease. That person passed away,
and Bailey was matched with Lunt a few
months later.
His situation was difficult.
Lunt is a lifelong athlete who played
Division I soccer at the University of
New Hampshire, was a slalom ski racer
who was on the 1976 Junior National
Ski Team, and raced, among other
things, sailboats, Mini Coopers and
bikes.
A week before the medical event that
would change his life, Lunt completed a
35-mile bike race at Penn State.
Then he suffered an acute aortic dissection
that went undiagnosed for five
days.
Doctors ran a number of tests but not
an angiogram, Swensen said. After four
days at the hospital they sent him home.
He went to work, gave a presentation
at a meeting and came home. Swensen
heard a scream and a thump not long
after and found Lunt on the floor of the
family room.
At 1 a.m., he was transported by air to
UPMC Shadyside where he underwent
emergency cardiac surgery.
“They told me the only reason they
were doing it was because he was so
young and so fit,” Swensen said.
“Otherwise they’d be telling me to say
goodbye.”
Both of his carotid arteries were 98
percent blocked. The complicated surgery
lasted eight hours, and while it was
going on, Lunt suffered a massive stroke.
His prognosis was grim.
“They gave us 48 hours,” Swensen
said. “In 48 hours he was communicating
with me. He was squeezing my hand
and rubbing my head.
“Whenever I walked into the room
in the ICU, the monitors would go,
‘Woooo.’ He knew I was there.”
Swensen advocated for Lunt and told
anyone who would listen that her husband
was a person with a history and a
love and a will that was going to factor
into his outcome.
Months and many battles later, he was
back home but in a wheelchair and in
need of a great deal of assistance.
Bailey joined them in April and there
SUBMITTED
Heather Bailey (left) has made a huge impact on Brian
Lunt (center) and his wife, Rose Purrelli Swensen.
Comfort and
compassion
when it’s
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Hope Hospice provides
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We focus on the whole person -
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877-Hope Hospice, Inc.
www.hopehospicepgh.org
3292 Babcock Boulevard • Pittsburgh PA 15237
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1-412-367-3685
3356 Boulevard, Pittsburgh, 15237