Mrs. Yanolavich, the client, was brought into the office by her neighbor who did not sit in on the interview. The neighbor told you, as she was
going back to the waiting room to wait to drive the client home, that Mrs. Yanolavich is not herself lately and she helped the client make this
appointment so they could see if there was something wrong.
Mrs. Y is pleasant as she tells you that she is having trouble living alone. She is a widow and lived with her widowed daughter. A month ago her
daughter died after a long illness with lymphoma. For a time there were nurses and other medical personnel in the home and eventually
hospice, “so, I didn’t feel alone.” After her daughter died, she tells you the medical equipment company came and removed everything, and she
has seen no one since. She says, “I’ve never lived alone. Never had a big empty house. I hear things. I think maybe I left a door unlocked or a
window open or the stove on.” While she talks, she digs in her purse for a tissue and wipes her nose. You notice that her hands shake. “She left
me the house and everything. She didn’t have kids. just don’t know, just don’t like being all alone and well, it just feels like I am going to be next.
Parents aren’t supposed to bury their kids and she was my only daughter, only child.”
During the Interview Mrs. Y rarely smiles. She looks uncomfortable and appears uncomfortable in her chair. She reports having trouble sleeping
and reports waking up early. She was eating regular meals when her daughter was there and medical personnel were preparing meals, but she
thinks she is eating less now and “I don’t think of it. I skip meals because I’m not hungry and don’t think about it.”
She has little else to report except that she was married 39 years before her husband died. She said they had no children except her daughter to
whom she was very close. She did not work outside her home and does do a good bit of knitting. “I knit those tiny caps for the hospital to use for
the newborns,” she tells you. One of the medical people told her about the need and she has been knitting for them ever since. She does not go
out or belong to any clubs or a church, but she does go to the grocery store with the woman who brought her in about once a week.
