NorthCare Hospice

NorthCare Hospice staff, volunteers, friends, families and even pets will march alongside our float in the North Kansas City Snake Parade again this year on March 13. The twenty six year old parade is a show-case for community not-for-profit organizations, as well as a lot of good plain fun.  Why does our hospice program so enthusiastically embrace participating in the parade each year?  For us it is a way to celebrate our connection with the Northland community.  We see ourselves as neighbors caring for our neighbors.  This very family oriented event is a perfect place to remind the community that NorthCare Hospice is there for them, and that we are a friendly group of people with families, pets and friends of our own.  While float building is not our expertise (the very first year our shamrock looked more like a giant broccoli stalk) it is a great team building event for our employees and other volunteers.  Hope to see you on the streets on the 13^th!

Tags: community, connection, embrace, North Kansas City, Northland, not-for-profit, Snake Parade

The weather is warming up and track practice has started for my daughters. The coaches give the kids the opportunity to try out the different events to see what they would like to do-long distance, sprints, hurdles, throwing, such as shotput or discus-there are many alternatives. My youngest daughter is 13 and the evening after the fourth day of practice she was beside herself with excitement, “guess what, guess what, you’ll never guess what I did in track today! I did hurdles she states exuberantly!” She describes every detail. “I was scared at first, but I wanted to try it. I went over the first one, no problem. Then the second one, wow. They only had us do two at a time while they are teaching us how to hold our lead foot and our trailing foot. When I ran through the second time I scraped my knee a little-that was scary. My next time through I ran, and when I came up over the hurdles… I felt like I was flying.” My heart soared to hear her say that-my little girl felt like she was flying! That was a joyous moment for me as a mother. I was also able to share with her my experiences with hurdles in track. What does this have to do with hospice? These moments, these connections, have happened for our patients throughout their lives and are continuing to happen. We are very fortunate to be able to share in a small piece of it through the care we give.

Tags: care, flying, hospice, joy, sunshine, track, warmth

I had the opportunity to share time with a new volunteer yesterday in Blue Springs. We talked about celebrating death. I shared that society deems it okay to celebrate the beginning of life but not the end. The end of someone’s life is just that…LIFE. He shared with me that in his family funerals were a celebration of that person’s life-a party of happy memories with room for sadness. He had already shared with his wife what he wanted his parting party to be like. A touching memory of mine was the first death I attended as a hospice nurse. The patient was in a small bedroom near the front of the house. It was striking how many family members that wanted to see her before the funeral home came to pick her up.  Everyone that came brought food, beverages, and hugs all around. She had lots of love. Before she became bedridden she loved to be in her flower garden-it had been a long time since she had been able to be out there, but her daughter had maintained the flower bed. The moment that made me say, I want that when I die happened when two granddaughters picked some of her flowers, crawled up in her bed on either side of her and wove the flowers through her hair. It was a beautiful moment, one that I will never forget.

Tags: celebration, end of life, flowers, happy, hospice, memories, party, shared

Part of our job in hospice is to guide families through healing relationships, if that is one of their goals.  Dr. Ira Byock, eloquently addresses the steps involved in relationship completion in his book The Four Things That Matter Most.  Dr. Byock is a past president of the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine and is currently Director of Palliative Medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. He is known for his extensive understanding of both the medical and psychosocial/spiritual journeys that dying individuals undertake.

The four simple statements that are powerful tools for improving and healing relationships are:  “Please forgive me.  I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.”  When Dr. Byock talks of completing a relationship through using these statements, he explains that his definition of completeness means nothing is unsaid and that the relationship is whole.  The four statements can be used in everyday relationships as well for finding peace when a loved one is dying.

Tags: compassion, forgive, hospice, love, peace, please, thank

It is a tradition at NorthCare when the weather has been cold and grey for too long, to have a ‘beach party’.  We create our own sunshine by bringing out the barbeque grill and cooking hamburgers and hotdogs first thing in the morning-we put on the full picnic spread indoors. We turn on the music-Beach Boys-or whatever might be handy-this year we had our volunteers from St. Teresa’s Academy join in the fun. They even decorated an area of our office upstairs with palm trees to be our beach and blended imitation ‘Strawberry daiquiris’-it is our way of chasing the winter blues away, and the taste of a hamburger from the grill shared with co-workers when it’s below 10 degrees outside is beyond delicious. Chances are you will get to see a few people sporting their most colorful beach shirts while eating potato salad and wearing a plastic lei. Very soon field staff are back out seeing patients and office staff return to work, but we all carry a bit of sunshine from the beach party with us that helps us ward off the biting cold.

Tags: beach, St. Teresa's Academy, sunshine, tradition, volunteers, weather, winter

It’s Official

Dr. Jesse Roberts, one of our medical directors, appears in the February issue of Ingram’s magazine.  He was recognized as one of the Heroes in Healthcare 2010, in the Lifetime Service category.  This was no surprise to any of us here at NorthCare. He was our first medical director when NorthCare began in 1996.  Dr. Roberts is a teacher and mentor on sophisticated end of life symptom management, and also role models gentle yet effective communication with patients and families during the most difficult times.  He sees each patient as a whole person and advocates not just for excellence in medical care, but also understands the importance of skilled emotional and spiritual support for the families we work with.  A less publicly trumpeted asset he possesses is a wonderful sense of humor that helps us all keep things in perspective.  You can hear his huge laugh from one end of the office to the other and he reminds us that celebrating life sometimes means not taking it and ourselves too seriously.  Congratulations, Dr. Roberts.

Dr. Cicely Saunders, founder of modern-day hospice, chose hospice as the name for her new program to allow individuals “to live until you die.”  Hospice was a term used in the Middle-Ages as a “place of comfort and refuge” for persons during the crusades or pilgrimages.  Individuals received physical, emotional and spiritual support, many during the last days of their life.

We asked our Friends of NorthCare Hospice to share what hospice means to them. 

“…. Is the feeling of understanding the guidance for the final days of my mother and mother-in-law.  The support during those days was so comforting.  The Hospice ladies’ visits were like “Angel Wings” had been wrapped around me said “We are here, you can relax.”  Each day I looked forward to their visits.  During this time, I could sit and talk about memories, and sing Amazing Grace and read many favorite Bible passages, to my loved ones.  Hospice visits gave great support to me, so I could take a break, and know that if something would happen, they would be there.  I called them “My visiting Angels.    -Carolyn Caniglia

Gentle, loving, compassionate care for patients and their families when a loved one is nearing the end of life.  -Karlene Papen

Hospice is focused on living.  Providing what your family can not.  -Michelle Carpenter

H elp -caregivers and patients. 

O pportunity – to die in comfort and dignity.

S pecial- Nurses, Aides, Massage Therapists, Social Workers, Chaplains

P rovided – equipment, nursing care, moral support.

I ntegrity: sincerity, honesty and candor

C aring – given by all Hospice employees and volunteers.

E ncouraging words for patients, families and caregivers.  LaDonna Culver

Share with us what hospice means to you.

Tags: angel, comfort, compassion, hospice, refuge, relax

It has been a tough winter for field staff.  By field staff I mean the hospice employees who are “out in the field” making patient visits in whatever weather happens to be tormenting the metropolitan area.  At least one employee literally ended up out in a field after her car refused to stay on the country road where a patient lived.  It is not unusual for our clinical director and me to be chatting by cell phone at 5:30AM, tuned to the  TV weather and figuring out how to get critical visits made and when or if to open the office.  On each of those mornings I send a quiet wish out to the universe that all of our traveling employees remain safe and that we are able to get to the homes of those patients who need a hands-on visit that day.  During one of the worst travel days of this past holiday season, one of our nurses parked her car and walked almost a mile into a neighborhood with impassable roads to make a visit to a distressed family.  We do what we can do, and spring can’t get here soon enough!

Tags: critical, hospice, safe, weather, winter

I am reading a book  right now called ‘Listening Below the Noise’ by Anne D. LeClaire. In this book a Peace Garden is mentioned, one of several public parks throughout Great Britain where a rule of silence is imposed. These gardens, where the sick can go and sit in peace were designed with an understanding of the role noise plays in fostering disease and silence plays in healing. As hospice professionals we encourage families to continue to be themselves around their loved one (not to treat their dying loved one like a fragile piece of glass and tiptoe around the room). Continue to touch, talk, use humor, bring out pictures, to cry, because each day until death is a part of life. There will be moments for celebration and moments for solitude.  Leon a terminally ill person in the book stated, “I’m not depressed, I’m dying. Dying requires concentration. It requires quiet.” “Living requires quiet too.” As we add appointments, shuffle meetings, navigate traffic, and pile more into our day-consider the amount of continual noise and disruption we are subjecting ourselves to. Give yourself a gift, try turning off the radio in the car, or taking a walk-you may find that it is a necessity-these healing moments of silence.

Tags: end of life, healing, hospice, peace, silence

I would like to relay the personal experience of a No One Dies Alone Volunteer as we near Valentines Day. Jennifer Bradshaw’s experience describes the heart of what we do in hospice.
This is an account of my first experience as a No One Dies Alone Volunteer. One day last August Veronica called me just when I was heading out to go home from work on a Friday. I can’t remember why now but at the time I had been in a hurry to get home. Veronica said there was a patient who was actively dying in a nursing home close to my home. The lady’s daughter had been there for several days and needed a break to go home and shower and rest and could I stay with her mom for an hour or so, so of course I said yes. I didn’t really expect her to die at that time, but when I walked into that room I knew that I was where I was meant to be. It was just natural knowing what to do….holding her hand , rubbing her back and talking to her, reassuring her that it was all right and that I wouldn’t leave her. It calmed her down. I felt her let go and knew her breathing had stopped, but I stayed for a while longer just because it seemed like the thing to do. I felt blessed by being chosen to witness a special and personal time of this woman’s life- someone I hadn’t known but now will never forget. Many people are afraid of hospitals and nursing homes let alone death but it is a part of life just like birth. I may have only known a name, but that person has loved and been loved and has made a difference in this world and I hope I did too. By Jennifer Bradshaw

Tags: difference, heart, love, loved