From Kennedy Care to Senior Life Home Care

 MY NAME IS KELLY REEVES and I want to help you. Let me tell you a little bit about myself and why I am committed to helping you and your loved ones. After graduating from college in 1987, I spent the next few years working and enjoying life. I was carefree and life was a grand adventure. I was lucky. However, in the late 1990s, the path of my life was drastically changed when my mother was diagnosed with a rare, terminal brain disease. She was only 52 years old when she was diagnosed with Pick’s disease. Over the next 7 years, I watched my mother go from being the strongest person I knew to requiring complete care, being unable to speak or even feed herself. My mother had always been my hero and when she became sick I had never even considered I could lose her to anything and certainly not to dementia. Within a matter of months, she was no longer able to live without constant supervision and my family struggled to determine how best to care for her. I became her legal guardian and for the final years of her life, I was charged with ensuring she received the care she required and deserved. It was and still is the greatest loss and learning experience of my life. The long goodbye of dementia can be cruel and devastating but her grace, dignity, and faith gave me the strength to make it and are still my guiding lights today. In 2001, my mother’s long goodbye ended and her death, as well as her illness, changed me in profound ways and one of those was the desire to change my career path. A good friend suggested that my personal and business experience would make healthcare and specifically home care for dementia patients a good fit. Later that year I purchased a home care franchise in Florida. I owned and operated this business for nine years. In 2010, I returned to school and obtained my Practical Nursing License and in 2012 relocated to NC.After moving to North Carolina, I was happy to have the opportunity to continue with helping seniors and others suffering from dementia as operations manager for a successful home care agency in Durham NC. In 2017, I was presented with the opportunity to purchase Kennedy  Care of Cary. I was excited to learn about the founder David Kennedy. David began Kennedy Care in 2003 after the loss of his mother. The purchase of Kennedy Care felt like an excellent way to continue my life’s work and to honor my mother’s memory.

“MY STORY STARTS WITH MY FAMILY – in particular my mom who I longed to emulate for her tireless amount of love for both her family and everyone she encountered. During my sophomore year of college my mom, the bedrock of our family, was diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer. She was given only months to live and there was nothing that I could do. How could we possibly prepare to lose our beloved vibrant, caring, selfless mother. We braced ourselves for what we knew would be a painful eventuality. Events like this change your perspective. Every moment was precious. I tried my best to spend every spare moment with her. She was constantly surrounded by the love of our dad and the 9 of us kids. So, while her physical strength was waning, she had a reason to live. Her emotional, mental, and spiritual strength was strong as she was covered in love. This, combined with the wonderful cancer treatment she received, allowed her to defy the odds and fight for 5 years. The death of my mom stirred a new passion in me. I wanted to enrich lives by creating new connections between people and create solutions to improve someone’s entire life not just through limited interactions with patients as a physician. My mom’s selflessness was the driving force behind creating Kennedy Care and I hope that she would be proud of her legacy. “

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – RALPH WALDO EMERSON