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Health & Fitness

Working In Hospice Is Inspirational Not Depressing

By Amy Fields, Health Care Consultant

When I tell people I work in hospice, the first thing most people say is, “isn’t that depressing?”  My response is always to tell them that hospice is not depressing, in fact it is the opposite; it is loving, it is compassionate and it is uplifting. Hospice allows someone to choose how they want to live.

When faced with a terminal illness of any kind, choices can be limiting for both the patient and their family.  We follow the doctor’s plans, advice, and the path they lay out for us. We usually have little say in how or when things happen. We endure all of it just to keep our loved one just a little while longer. But sometimes that is not possible and we are left with one decision; would you like to be in an unfamiliar hospital, hooked up to machines, surrounded by unfamiliar nurses and doctors or even worse, be alone? Or would you like to be at home, comfortable and pain free, surrounded by the people you loved most in life? When considered objectively most people would choose the second option, so why don’t more patients and families choose hospice? It’s the same reasons I get asked if my job is depressing- fear. Fear of death and fear of the pain that death might bring to us.

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I have lost many people in my life, some expectantly and others very suddenly.  It always hurts. My Great-Great Aunt Gert was 103 when she passed away, but you would have never known it. She always lived life to the fullest. In her 100s she was still very sharp. She went to all the kid’s baseball and football games, made her famous Christmas cookies every year and even stayed out until 3 a.m. gambling with her friends at the casino. Then she suffered a fall and broke her hip. She was not able to bounce back, and this active amazing woman became bed bound. She made the choice for hospice, and an amazing thing happened. She got a team of people who loved and cared for her just as much as her family did. And suddenly this hard time wasn’t so hard. Our family gathered, told stories and celebrated her life. We all had a chance to say good bye. When she did pass away the support we got from hospice made the pain and fear a lot easier to accept.

The death of a loved one is never easy.  At any age or any time in someone life, death is difficult. It is final and it is depressing, but hospice in not death. Hospice is life. In those final days, weeks, or months the patient becomes a person, a person who gets to decide how to live, where to live, how to be pain free, how to be supported, and most importantly how to say goodbye. The amazing hospice staff provides that person and their family a choice in how to spending those last moments together. And that is always beautiful and never depressing. 

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Amy Fields is a Health Care Consultant with Seasons Hospice & Palliatve Care in Des Plaines. Its website is www.seasons.org






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