When medical options run out, patients with a terminal illness must face their own death, many doing so with courage and dignity. This task is made easier when they can choose to spend their last days at home.
During the past 17 years, a new partner within the medical community has quietly emerged to provide terminally ill patients with this choice.
Hospice care helps these patients and their families to deal with a final illness with as little pain and in as much comfort as possible.
”Hospice is a holistic approach to relieve pain and suffering,” says Bonnie Ryan, executive director of the Hospice of Northeastern Illinois Inc.
”For most patients, what is worse than pain is the fear of pain. Hospice can help them stay at home, pain-free and comfortable.”
Although the majority of hospice organizations provide services to patients in the home, hospices do contract with hospitals and nursing homes to provide their unique services for patients in these facilities.
Hospice Care Chicagoland, for example, is one of two for-profit hospices in Illinois and actually has its own in-patient units at three Chicago-area hospitals, including Alexian Brothers in Elk Grove Village. However, according to director Phil Decker, less than 10 percent of staff time is spent servicing in-patients.
What hospice offers is a wide range of services for a patient`s physical, emotional and spiritual needs during the final months of a terminal illness. Hospice services offer care to both the patient and the patient`s family.
Nurses will visit the patient as often as once a day to adjust medical equipment and offer medication for pain control.
A social worker can visit the family to assess special needs. Home health aides are available to help the caregiver change sheets or bathe the patient. Volunteers can visit with the patient, allowing the primary caregiver a chance to get out of the house for a much-needed break.
Hospice also offers pastoral services to the patient and family, and bereavement counseling for the family once the patient dies.
Dame Cicely Saunders, a social worker and physician in England, set the concept in motion, opening the first hospice in a residential suburb of London in 1967.
The first hospice in the United States started operations in Connecticut in 1974. The idea spread rapidly across the country. More than 1,600 operational hospice organizations exist in the United States, according to the National Hospice Organization in Alexandria, Va.
In the northwest suburbs and surrounding areas, hospice organizations include: Hospice of Northeastern Illinois Inc. (708-381-5599), which has contracts with Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Northern Illinois Medical Center in McHenry, Woodstock Memorial in Woodstock, Harvard in Harvard and Humana in Hoffman Estates; Fox Valley Hospice (708-879-6064), which works with Sherman Hospital in Elgin, St. Joseph`s in Elgin and Delnor Community Hospital in Geneva and St. Charles; Rainbow Hospice (708-292-0550), which works with Holy Family in Des Plaines and Lutheran General in Park Ridge;
Hospice Care Chicagoland (708-495-8484), which contracts with Alexian Brothers; and Northwest Community Hospital Home Hospice (708-259-1000), which contracts with Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights and serves surrounding areas.
You do not have to be a patient at or be referred by a doctor from a specific hospital to use a particular hospice, and hospice territories do overlap. A call to any of these will help direct you to the right
organization.
One of the best aspects of hospice care is that, in most cases, Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance or a combination of these will pick up the costs of hospice care.
Not all hospices offer medical care. Some operate strictly a volunteer program. The Illinois Department of Public Health must license an organization before it can offer nursing care.
Ryan emphasizes that hospice is a personal choice for each individual patient. Some choose to fight for a cure to the very end.
”When the patient`s goals change from cure to quality of life, then hospice can step in,” says Ryan. ”Our goal is not to prevent them from dying but to make the patient more comfortable.”
Although most hospices have paid staff, the organizations could not survive without volunteers. Some 150 people volunteer through the Hospice of Northeastern Illinois in Barrington. The Fox Valley Hospice lists 500 volunteers.
Patricia Kirkland, 59, of Arlington Heights, is a hospice volunteer. She visited a patient to provide the caregiver with some relief. Kirkland said it really wasn`t difficult to find things in common to talk about.
”You try to feel out what the interests of the person are,” she said.
”My patient loved to play gin rummy and there was seldom a pause in the conversation.
”Toward the end he did not have the stamina to talk, so we would just sit and read the paper.”
Talk to the families who have used hospice services and there is no doubt it made a difference in their lives.
Dr. Robert Hoshizaki, who practices internal medicine in Barrington and Elk Grove Village, has not only referred several patients to hospice care but utilized hospice services for a member of his own family.
About a year ago, he and his wife, a trained nurse, cared for her terminally ill father in their home.
”Even with our level of training, it would have been difficult without hospice. They`re a tremendous group of people,” Hoshizaki says.
Hospices are set up to deal with any type of terminal illness, from AIDS to heart conditions, lung disease and muscle disorders. But the majority of patients that hospices serve suffer from some form of cancer. Hospice will care for a patient for a year, months, weeks, or even a day.
Myrtle Pool of Barrington lost her husband to cancer two years ago. ”A lovely nurse, Barbara Easterdale-I`ll never forget her-came to our house to explain hospice. That very evening my husband passed away. Barbara came over immediately and was so kind and loving and caring. She helped me so much. Hospice does a lot of things people don`t know about.”
