by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
Kathy Frodahl, president and CEO of New England Home Health Care in Bangor for the past six years, has high praise for the 70 employees under her leadership. But Certified Nurses Aide Lynne Jordan, who has been with the company for 16 years, strikes Frodahl as exceptional.
“Lynne is the type of employee who embodies the spirit of care that New England Health Care strives for,” Frodahl said. “Lynne is very kind. She has compassion, and a passion for what she’s doing. Everywhere she goes, people want her back. She sees how her clients’ lives can contract when they become ill and she does what she can to broaden that world. I look for employees who will engage with clients — Lynne does that.”
Particularly outstanding, Frodahl said, was Jordan’s work with a client named Helen who had lost the use of her legs and arms to multiple sclerosis.
“I had seen a documentary about someone making paintings by holding the brush in their mouth,” Jordan said. Intrigued, she began to wonder if painting that way might appeal to Helen. She began to experiment — on herself.
“I put my hands behind my back, put a brush in my mouth and tried to paint maple leaves. It wasn’t pretty,” Jordan said, laughing at the memory. “I try to put myself in the client’s position — to learn what it must be like for them.”
When she talked to Helen about trying paint while holding an artist’s brush in her mouth her client liked the idea, and thus began a creative collaboration between Helen and Jordan.
“First, we did exercises to build up Helen’s mouth muscles,” Jordan said. Eventually, the day came when Helen was strong enough to hold a brush in her mouth and to apply watercolor or acrylic paint to paper.
“I served as Helen’s easel,” Jordan said. “I stood in front of her and held a pad of paper while she practiced brush strokes.”
Helen progressed from practice strokes to making paintings of flowers, mountains, a potted plant, a Christmas tree and a name sign for her newborn granddaughter, a legacy of art now treasured by Helen’s family members..
“She did a little bit of painting two or three times a week,” Jordan said. “It took her three weeks to a month to finish one painting. She got tired, but it was a good tired, because she had something — her painting — to show for it.”
Jordan had Helen’s painting of the Christmas tree reproduced as greeting cards so Helen could send them to her family and friends.