Thanksgiving Day is a time to pause and recognize our blessings. While you are eating turkey, ham, yams, cranberry sauce, and other delicacies with your families, say a prayer for our colleagues who are out seeing home care patients on Thanksgiving Day. If you are one of those who visits patients and their families on Thanksgiving, thank you for sharing our beloved gift of home care with those our industry serves.

One of my nursing colleagues from years past knew I had children at home to open gifts with on Christmas morning. Thus, she was always willing to cover the Christmas call while I covered Thanksgiving. Seeing the variety of experiences at those Thanksgiving meals in patients' homes was enlightening. Celebrations varied from elaborate feasts with houses full of people with multiple tables full of food in one home, to a small baked chicken with potato salad and three or four thankful smiling faces in another.

Seeing large families together, particularly the gift of seeing multiple generations interacting, was always heartwarming. One could see the love as a great-grandmother beamed with joy over a newborn descendant with a still swollen face, swaddled up in a blanket. Seeing a 50-something grandfather toss a baseball or football with a grandson certainly brought a smile. (The young dad was usually somewhere nearby, perhaps wondering why he never got that much attention from the proud grandfather.)

The ladies, and maybe a few men, cooking in the kitchen or outside fret over having the feast done on time and in the right quantities for everyone. Smaller, more intimate, gatherings offered opportunities for stories and more quiet reflections. In both cases it was a time to give thanks.

The most challenging visits to make on Thanksgiving Day were to those patients who lived alone and had no one to share their meal with, and in some cases had no special meal. Many had no children or had children who lived far away. Some were invited by family but chose to stay at home due to worry about medical issues or other concerns. Some patiently waited for family to call, or for a friend to drop off a Thanksgiving meal wrapped in foil. Others lit up when the holiday phone call was received from a distant child or grandchild.

It would have been nice to have taken a little of the abundant joy and happiness from one house and share a bit of it with the patient who was lonely. But in a sense we already do that every day in home care. We take the caring, compassionate attitude that home care fosters with us every day.

A friend shared a story about a home care patient who admitted she purposely did not follow medication instructions. When he asked why she was noncompliant she told him that if she took her medication as ordered she would become well and would be discharged from home care. She said she needed her nurse, and if not taking her medications meant the nurse would keep seeing her then that is what she would do. This patient made a conscious choice to be ill rather than have to deal with the loneliness of having her nurse taken away.

When you sit down to your Thanksgiving meal, pray that those aides and nurses visiting patients at home might be protected and joyfully serve those in need. More importantly, pray for those we serve in home care, especially those who are lonely and in need of a smiling face on Thanksgiving Day.

This Thanksgiving, remember- you make a major impact on the lives of those you touch in home care.