BOSTON — After back-to-back, eight-hour shifts at a chiropractor’s
office and a rehab center, Nirva arrived outside an elderly woman’s
house just in time to help her up the front steps.
Nirva took the woman’s arm as she hoisted herself up, one step at a
time, taking breaks to ease the pain in her hip. At the top, they
stopped for a hug.
“Hello, bella,” Nirva said, using the word for “beautiful” in Italian.
“Hi, baby,” replied Isolina Dicenso, the 96-year-old woman she has helped care for for seven years.
The women each bear accents from their homelands: Nirva, who asked
that her full name be withheld, fled here from Haiti after the 2010
earthquake. Dicenso moved here from Italy in 1949. Over the years,
Nirva, 46, has helped her live independently, giving her showers,
changing her clothes, washing her windows, taking her to her favorite
parks and discount grocery stores.
Now Dicenso and other people living with disabilities, serious
illness and the frailty of old age are bracing to lose caregivers like
Nirva due to changes in federal immigration policy.
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Source: Kaiser Health News
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