By Sue Stewart
In the past several years,
hospice of CNY has expanded its mission to include palliative care,
and has broadened its partnership with hospitals, nursing homes, and
other community organizations whose focus also includes end of life
care.
During this same time, an
80-year-young Warren Stewart, my father-in-law, was beginning a
different kind of partnership with a community of caring people.
Through a system of care already in place, he was offered options
for end of life care that would ultimately support him and his
family through his death.
A 59 year marriage, a son, 4
grandchildren, 2 great grandchildren, 41 years as employee and
supervisor at Nestle – clubs, music, sports and travel. All his
life, he had been a resident of Fulton. His safe and comfortable
community would eventually become small and more narrow as he
focused his diminished energy on his own aging and chronic illness.
In 1996 I watched him watch his
wife die of a chronic illness in a hospital, fully resuscitated on
machines. He never recovered from her death, nor did he change his
belief that he should have “done more” to keep her alive.
His friendships would be lost
through years of many deaths (as we later found his memories of
those friends, journaled, with pasted obituaries, punctuated with
“good friend”, “like a brother”, “God bring you comfort”). His home
would be sold, with a move to an assisted living facility. His
travels now were to five different doctors, the Wound Care Center,
out-patient surgery, eye doctors. His visitors would be family, and
home care nurses twice a day (they brought him pie). His constant
companions were grief, a darkened room and his television.
A year ago, his relationship to
the caring community was altered, and ultimately improved, as he
agreed to a move to a newly renovated home for eight seniors in
Liverpool. At “The House at 807” he made new friends, he bought new
clothes and furniture, he tried new food and ate three huge meals a
day. He took drives with family, he entertained at holidays, and
last November he decided against the aggressive treatment
recommended by his physician for yet another newly-diagnosed
disease.
Warren had done his advance
planning. A health care proxy had been in place for years, and he
agreed to at-home Do Not Resuscitate order. He became weakened and
in May, after two hospitalizations and visits from another home care
agency, still determined not to pursue curative treatment, defeated
in body but not in spirit, he consented to receive hospice care at
home.
Without much conversation, he
allowed new “strangers” from “the community” into his home and his
life. One by one the entire hospice team entered his room at 807:
nurses and social workers, a sports-loving chaplain, a volunteer,
on-call nurses, a nurse for daily dressing changes. Companies
delivering oxygen, a wheelchair, a life line, medications.
Private-hire help got him through a “spell.” Through it all, he
never talked about hospice or dying or death. He was tied up with
living.
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