It’s the classic childhood scene: A little girl on the bottom bunk of her family’s summer cottage. The moon in the sky overhead. The bright cone of a flashlight illuminating the latest story carried home from the library in town. This child is a reader, and she will always be. A lifelong passion has been forged.
When Patricia Early looks back on the life she has lived, she sees those books — Nancy Drew, Dickens, the classics — stacked beside her bunk in summer. She remembers herself sitting on the creaking floor of her father’s retail shop in Montpelier, Vermont, and listening to his persuasive talk about the large home appliances in his showroom. She hears the sound of her mother playing the piano that arrived late in Pat’s teenage years and the three-part harmonies her mother and aunts would sing while washing dishes.
At college, Pat would study music and emerge a classically trained soprano. Soon she would marry and have two little girls named Jennifer and Lauren. When the marriage ended, Pat took any job she could to support her family, but soon she was in luck: a local high school wished to create a job for her as a reading specialist. Pat loved that job, loved the students she came to know as she unlocked the mysteries of the written word for them. But five years into that career, Pat was forced to stop, for a deep fatigue had settled in. She felt, she says, as if her body were encased in concrete, as if she simply could not move. The pain was intense. Her eyes, her mouth, her throat were dry. She had lost her ability to sing.
Complex needs
Pat was living with Sjögren’s, an autoimmune disorder that affects millions worldwide. In Pat’s case, the Sjögren’s was accompanied by a number of additional autoimmune disorders, rendering Pat’s medical case enormously complex.
Pat’s life, too, was growing more complex. After fifteen years as a single mom of two, she fell in love and married a wonderful man – a widower named Joe who had two children of his own, Dan and Katie. Together, they forged a new life in Valley Township, Pennsylvania.
Still, the medical issues have never stopped compounding. Pat was finding it increasingly difficult to do the work she wished to do. The symptoms were multiplying. The number of pills doctors prescribed. The doctors who refused to listen, who could not answer the questions Pat had. And then Covid struck.
When a doctor who Pat valued found his practice decimated by Covid, Pat knew she needed another medical team. When, still recuperating from Covid herself, she saw an advertisement for Patina on social media, she decided to find out more. She liked what she heard about Patina’s emphasis on relationships. She was intrigued by Patina’s capacity to manage care from the age of 65 through transition. She trusted the team to see her for who she is, and to encourage her to take the kinds of proactive steps that are not always, at first, comfortable.
“They’re always kicking my butt, making sure I get out more, connect more, live more,” Pat says, laughing. “I don’t know what I’d do without them. They care. They genuinely do.”
“I have a really complicated medical history. Kathy is completely on top of it, and Patina checks in with me every week. They are always just a finger tap away on the app.”
Today, as Pat sits in the home she shares with Joe, she waits for her 3 o’clock virtual visit from Kathy Hill, NP, her Patina PCP. Kathy, says Pat, talks to Pat in ways that no one in the medical profession ever has — caring as much for Pat’s mental health as she does about the reports she reads from the various specialists Pat still visits. She’s sent a sonogram team to Pat’s house. She’s sent phlebotomists. And when it became clear that mobility issues were keeping Pat inside, cut off from the world and alone through much of the day, Kathy insisted that Pat and Joe get a ramp built so that Pat could once again take a ride in a car, go out to eat, see winter turn into spring.
“I’ve never heard anyone get so excited about a ramp,” Pat says, as she tells the story. “Kathy was as happy as I was that I could now, at last, leave the house.”
When the 3 o’clock hour arrives and Kathy appears on Pat’s iPad, it’s clear that these two are good friends. They have inside jokes. They share news. But they also very specifically talk about Pat’s medical situation and the lymphedema therapy that will soon begin — what to expect and what’s important.
“I have a really complicated medical history,” Pat says, noting that the history got even more complicated following Pat’s second bout with Covid, which attacked Pat’s lymph nodes and left her with an additional diagnosis of lymphedema. “Kathy is completely on top of it. I’ve never once had to repeat myself. She’s never forgotten the nuances. She understands how my various conditions interact with each other, and how they impact me. I don’t know what I would have done without them during this truly terrible year.”
Opening New Doors
Kathy, who spent a long time at Pat’s house at the start of their relationship asking every imaginable question and going through every bottle of medicine on the shelf, is joined by Nina Hernandez, RN, Pat’s Patina Nurse Champion, in her care of Pat. The presence of both in Pat’s life has helped open new doors — giving Pat the energy, for example, to continue with online watercolor classes and to mentor young people. All of this, and so much more, has helped eclipse the paralyzing isolation that Pat has lived with for too long.
“Patina checks in with me every week,” Pat says. “They are always just a finger tap away on the app.”
Before her guests leave, Pat shares her latest artwork. She tells a story about one of the brightly-painted pages. “My therapist asked me to paint something I have lost to the disease, but to paint that in a beautiful way,” Pat says, lifting an image of a young woman in a pink gown singing. Above the figure’s head is an ocean of notes. “That’s me giving my gift of music to the universe, for anyone who wants it,” she says.
The universe, apparently, is listening. Not long ago, Pat says, her youngest daughter started to sing. “My gift has become hers,” she says. She pauses then. She smiles.
Learn how other Patina patients are enjoying a better healthcare experience in these additional stories.
Enjoy primary care from Patina
Available at the same cost you pay for primary care with your Medicare plan today, Patina is a different kind of primary care that helps you thrive in all aspects of life. You’ll get a dedicated care team that includes a Patina Primary Care Practitioner (PCP) and Patina Health Champion who take the time to know you, understand your needs, and help you navigate the healthcare system – so you get the care you deserve on your terms via video visits, phone, chat and in-person visits, when needed.
Meet Pat
Former reading specialist from Valley Twp, PA.; mom of four married to Joe
Classically-trained soprano; paints with watercolors; mentors teens
Needed a new PCP after her physician’s practice was decimated during Covid
Complex medical history; lives with multiple autoimmune disorders and lymphedema
Relies on Kathy Hill, PA, her Patina PCP, and Nina Hernandez, RN, Patina Nurse Champion, to care for her physical and emotional well-being
Grateful for Patina’s personal approach and a team that knows her well – and advocates for her best interests