2011 Annual Report - Visiting Nurse Service of New York

10 ANNUAL REPORT 2011
Agnes
Venezia
Mrs. Venezia has lived her entire life in this neighborhood. “Everyone around
here knows me,” she says. “Why would I ever move somewhere else?”
“ I love everything in my apartment,” says
Agnes Venezia, 93, who has a team of VNSNY
CHOICE MLTC caregivers and a home health
aide to help her live safely and independently
at home. “Even my walls are my friends. ”
It is easy to see why she loves her home so much. The apartment
contains more than 70 years’ worth of memories. In the bedroom,
under a photograph of her two daughters in 1949, she points to
the spot where the girls each slept in cribs before moving to the
pull-out couch. A collection of clay elephants represents decades
of gifts from family members and her ceramics hobby. Duck
figurines in the kitchen remind her of visiting her father’s farm
upstate as a girl, and a colorized wedding photo from 1937 brings
a flood of memories from a happy life with her late husband, with
whom she moved into this apartment in 1941.
Her daughters and their families have moved to Brooklyn, but
Mrs. Venezia cannot imagine living anywhere but this thirdfloor
walk-up on the border of New York’s Little Italy and
Chinatown neighborhoods. Nurses and social workers from
VNSNY CHOICE MLTC, as well as from the
Chinatown Neighborhood Naturally Occurring
Retirement Community program (NNORC), visit
regularly to help her maintain overall good health