By Suzanne Braun Levine
When my mother died recently at 94, I felt sad at losing her, but also relieved after several years of slow decline during which I always felt I was one degree of deterioration behind in caring for her. And I felt grateful – grateful to her for the loving and gracious way she took her slow leave, and very grateful to the Hospice team that guided our last months together. Thanks to them, she died at home, smiling to the end.
I want everyone to know about the individuals who formed her team and about the services that are offered by the program, which is run by the Visiting Nurse Service of New York – and covered by Medicare. Soon after she was released from her last hospital stay, we were approved for Hospice care and from then on, I felt we were both in good hands. The first consultations were with the intense young Dr. Hutchison, who patiently and sympathetically explained the alternatives that I (as her health care proxy) needed to consider in order to guide my mother’s treatment, and reassuring Nurse Rosalie, who gently introduced me to the likely treatments she would need. (They also reviewed her medications and discarded those that no longer applied under the circumstances.) The conversations took place at my mother’s bedside, with all of us including her with smiles and gentle touches.
From then on, I knew I had a team behind me. I realized that the crisis calls I had been living in dread of for the past five years, would go to their 24-hour hotline first, as her caretakers were instructed. Rosalie or her deputy visited at least once a week, Dr. Hutchison every few weeks and every day at the end. They were joined by Rivka the social worker, who listened with compassion and advised without jargon. None of them spent less than half an hour with her. They, in turn, arranged for other optional services – someone to wash and color her hair, health aides to give her caretakers a few hours off, and a dog trainer who volunteered to bring his golden retriever Daisy on visits to the bedridden. Since she had in her professional life as a social worker, developed just such a program for hospitalized kids, this was an especially poignant gift.
With their support I was free to concentrate on enjoying her laugh, basking in her loving smile, and trying to interpret her unraveling sentences until I just let myself drift along with her. After her peaceful leave-taking, I was reminded of the line from Hamlet, “May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.” The Hospice team were her angels.
For information on:
The Transition Network Caring Collaborative:
“Partners: TTN-Caring Collaborative & Visiting Nurse Service of New York City” (VNSNY): http://bit.ly/aqvQvs
Visiting Nurse Service of New York: