From Hospital to Hospice
One Nurse’s Journey Towards Grace at the Bedside
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I am baking Christmas cookies… in September. I am grateful that it’s not a hot September day. My sister’s favorite Christmas cookies are our family’s sugar cookies, frosted by dunking them into a watery mix of hot water, melted butter, powdered sugar and vanilla. The consistency has to be just right, and of course there is no recipe! Since they are Christmas cookies, they need to be Santas, Christmas trees, stockings, hearts, with sprinkles and colored sugar on top!
While I am at it, I add a couple other favorite recipes and bake up a storm. Christmas cookies in September, even that felt right.
Is my sister ready to see me? I don’t know, but the least I can do is make these cookies she loves and mail them to her. I know she will eat these. She should be eating whatever she wants at this point. Those words come out of my mouth while talking to my brother. I am not sure I had ever said those words before, but looking back I can clearly see that they came from my heart, my hospice heart
“I don’t care if it’s Christmas cookies in July or ice cream for breakfast. Let them eat what is appetizing and comforting to them.”
As a hospice nurse, I have often used those words to encourage family members to allow the patient to eat whatever it is they want to eat…while they can eat it. So many times, especially early on, the family members feel that “if I can just get something nutritious in them, it will be o.k.”
I remind family members that typically our gatherings for birthdays, parties and holidays end up with everyone conglomerating in the kitchen. That’s where wonderful memories are made, and many times those memories include food. That is o.k. We just need to recognize that when a person is dying, they should eat whatever they want, whenever they want it as long as they can safely eat it.
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About the Book
If you or a loved one is considering entering hospice care, please know that you are not alone. If you have cared for a loved one through their dying process, many of these stories will ring familiar. Contained within these pages is a collection of stories and experiences for terminally ill patients and their families, prayerfully written in hopes that they will provide comfort, strength, and blessing to you.
About the Author
I have been a hospice nurse for over twenty years. Hospice nursing is a unique opportunity to come alongside patients and their families as they face a terminal illness. It is filled with a variety of challenges and rewards. It is important that the nurse and hospice team fulfill their duties with skill, sensitivity, and professionalism in order to make this journey easier to navigate. Those who have been successful have viewed their work as more of a calling than just another job for a nurse.
I have known a lot of nurses over the many years that have specialized in hospice that thought it would be easy nursing since they figured, “After all, the patients are dying.” Nothing could be further from the truth since our patients are in multi-system failure. It requires a lot of skilled assessments, interventions, and heading up the multi-system interdisciplinary team to manage these patients’ systems to keep them comfortable. It also requires dealing with the families and friends that are caring for these patients.
I remember meeting Susie Vincent when she came in for an interview. It was for an RN case manager position at the hospice I was working for at the time. I wondered if she would be joining us. I thought about what she might be asked in the interview. Hospice nursing is about the story of the patient’s journey, but the nurse also has his or her own story as part of their history. I knew Susie would be asked to tell her story about what had drawn her to working with patients that are facing a life-threatening illness.
Susie was hired and has shown exemplary compassion and skill in caring for clients. She feels it is a call from God and that gives her strength to carry out her responsibilities.
I am honored to endorse Susie Vincent and her book. I found it hard to put down once I started reading it. She has captured the heart of nursing and shares some important practical insights that will help both nurses and patients to experience grace at the bedside as they prepare for their final journey.
—Debbie Summers BSN, RN