When terminally ill patients are admitted to the hospice unit at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ North Chicago Medical Center, their families are encouraged to assist with their relatives’ care and even stay overnight in special guest rooms at the unit.
So, Sunday’s third annual memorialt service to remember the 44 veterans and medical center staff members who died in the last year was a chance for the families to reconnect with the nurses they had grown close to during their relatives’ final illnesses.
“The faces were very familiar,” said Judy Vega, a nurse on the unit for four years.
“We, too, here have been a part of all of your families,” said Joyce Wadlington, a nurse manager and the hospice program coordinator, as she greeted the more than 40 people who filled the unit’s tiny day room for the brief service of prayers and music.
Vega and another nurse who works with the terminally ill patients and their families, Mary Wernick, read the names of each of their former patients as a candle was lit in each person’s memory. Some family members took the extinguished candles with them as they filed out of the service.
The unit, which opened in 1993, provides specialized care for 10 to 15 veterans at a time who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness and typically have six months or less to live, Wadlington said.
She described a hospice patient as traveling “on a journey from one life to the next.”
Because of the circumstances their patients are facing, the staff also works more with the family members to prepare them for their relatives’ deaths than staff members would on a typical hospital ward, Wadlington said.
“It’s not just that patients come here and die,” Wadlington said. “We assist them to live their life until they die.”
That may mean that the hospice patient goes home for a few days or a few hours to clear up what Wadlington described as “unfin-
ished business,” which could be something as ordinary as cleaning out the garage, she said.
Patients in the past have ranged in age from 34 to 92, Wadlington said.
Byron and Roschelle Harris drove five hours from Toledo with their two young sons, Nicholas, 5, and Solomon, 5 months. They came to remember Roschelle Harris’ father, Alfred Boyd, who had worked at the medical center for about 13 years, and to say thank you to his care-givers.
“I’ve never seen a more caring group of professionals,” Byron Harris said.
Other family members of patients also saluted the nurses who cared for their relatives.
“The family was always welcome,” recalled Dolly Dougherty of McHenry, whose husband, Michael Dougherty, stayed in the unit for six weeks while he battled lung cancer.
“They are truly angels,” said Karen Xenos of Harwood Heights, who came to remember her father, Stanley Schimanski. “They treated each patient as though it was their father, their brother, their loved one.”
Roschelle Harris recalled that her father requested to be treated at the hospital where he worked, most recently as an administrative officer of the day.
“He really liked it here,” she said. “This was like his second family.”
Mary Taylor of Antioch has attended the memorial service every year it has been held.
“I just feel real close to the people here,” who cared for her husband, Charles Taylor. “They are an extended family.”
