Welcome to my blog. Here I discuss my life experiences and the fascinating people I meet along the way. I also document my adventures in writing, reading, and cooking. Hope you have a nice stay!
People die everywhere. Hospice workers, including volunteers, go to where patients live. Often this is the patient’s home, but just as frequently patients reside in residential or nursing facilities. Hospice patients may also be in prison or living on the streets, homeless.
It goes without saying that when my fellow volunteers and I meet a new patient for the first time, we know that, in short order, we will be saying goodbye for the last time. The end is always there, lurking in the background. The call can come at any moment and rarely aligns with the predictions made by medical professionals.
Finally, after a couple of false starts, I conducted my first Generativity Project in the style of Chochinov’s Dignity Therapy. It took a couple of weeks to complete. Here, I detail my fits and starts as well as the process and tools I eventually settled on.
I will talk to pretty much anybody. I enjoy meeting new people, seek out the company of people from all walks of life, and believe that one way we move society forward is by being willing to meet people unlike ourselves with genuine openness. So it’s no surprise that I end up engaging a lot of people when visiting patients. This is especially true in retirement communities, skilled nursing facilities, and assisted living centers. That’s how I met a patient named Marie, who wasn’t even on my service.
We all carry, in our memories, thousands of moments from our lives and hundreds of stories we can tell. When a hospice patient is mentally clear, has lived a long life, and can recall events from decades past, the hours spent together can be filled with entertaining stories and unexpected life lessons. It’s actually a rare combination of circumstances—but when it all comes together, the results can be magical.
Communication can be one of the most challenging aspects of hospice care. There are many instances where seamless, everyday communication with patients is difficult.
Richard always wanted to hear about my life, my happenings, and my family. In this, he was consistent. He always expressed a gracious interest in me. Richard was an outwardly focused person.
There are many reasons for volunteering, from the feel-good reward of helping others to the chance to meet a wide variety of people from all walks of life and the opportunity to learn. Ultimately, I feel there is one standout aspect of Hospice of the Valley that ties everything together into a whole that is much more than the sum of all its parts. Community. A sense of belonging comes from being part of a family of volunteers. There is egalitarian togetherness in the Hospice of the Valley organization. And ultimately, we form a healing, supportive society with our patients and their family caregivers. All three of these nested communities are vital and contribute to my desire to volunteer with Hospice of the Valley.
Occasionally, a patient is taken off our hospice service or specifically removed from the volunteer visiting sub-service. The reasons are varied. Sometimes patients are remarkably better and will live well past the six-month limit Medicare places on hospice. Other times, patients will decide that hospice is not for them and want to continue fighting their disease. Occasionally patients may become less amenable to visitors because they feel tired or embarrassed that they can no longer participate as they used to. Though we often visit with patients who can no longer join us in conversation, we have to respect the patient's wishes, even if we feel there is more we can do for them. In hospice care, the patients are in control and their needs always come first. Still, it can be saddening when one can no longer visit with a patient to which one has become attached. How I approach my patients helps me deal with the occasional patient I don't get to see all the way to the end of their time in this world.
The median time on a hospice service in the United States is 18 days, barely three weeks. This means that half of all hospice patients die within 18 days. Remember that this means some will die in 7 days, some in 16, and some in just one or two days. I have had my share of patients who died before I could visit them a second time.
We all can face death and support those who are dying. Anything that gets in the way of that ability or belief in that ability is just societal noise.
