 When people talk about what FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care has meant to them and their families, it is almost as if they are reading from a script, because they tend to start by saying the same thing.
“If it were not for Hospice, I don’t know what I would do,” says Kemp Cummings, whose wife has an inoperable brain tumor.
“I honestly don’t know what I would have done without them,” says Jeri Moore, who availed herself of Hospice support groups and grief counseling after her husband died last year.
Chrissy Connelly’s daughter, Lindsey, died in July after a long struggle with brain cancer. She was 15. Hospice helped her family care for her during the last two weeks of her life.
“We never would have gotten through it without them,” her mother says.
“At the end, we were having to call them in the middle of the night almost every night—two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning—and they would always act like this was the only place they wanted to be. They took away our fear of not knowing how to care for Lindsey. They showed us what to do, and they ministered to us emotionally and spiritually, as well.”
After Lindsey’s death, Chrissy and other members of her family took advantage of the professional counseling offered by Hospice’s Grief Resource & Counseling Center.
“I have friends who would help me if they knew how, but they don’t know how to deal with the depth of my pain. Hospice does,” Chrissy says. “It is a safe place to go and unload all the pain we feel. That has made all the difference in the world.”
The services of FirstHealth Hospice and its Grief Resource & Counseling Center are available to anyone. Hospice care is overseen by physicians and provided by teams of nurses, nursing assistants, social workers, grief counselors, spiritual care chaplains and volunteers.
Hospice is part of a charitable, not-for-profit organization and is endowed through the FirstHealth Hospice Foundation. Through that support, Hospice is able to cover the cost of indigent care, fund a substitute caregiver program and provide a medication assistance program that helps with the cost of non-related medications.
“We are so fortunate to be supported by our community,” says Charlotte Patterson, R.N., CHPN, director of FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care. “Because of this, we are able to meet these important needs and provide support services back to the community as well, whether they are Hospice patients or not. It is important to us to give back to the community whenever we can.”
The Foundation also enables Hospice to operate the Grief Resource & Counseling Center as a community service. There is no charge for participating in support groups, attending seminars or seeing professional grief counselors.
“A lot of grief centers set limits on the number of sessions you can have,” says Tina Markoff, Family Services and Grief Resource & Counseling Center coordinator for FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care. “We have no limits, so we can use our professional judgment about how much help each individual needs.”
While a growing number of Hospice organizations around the country are being operated for profit, FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care, as part of the FirstHealth of the Carolinas family, remains a not-forprofit organization.
The Hospice staff and volunteers have been helping Kemp Cummings take care of his wife, Becky, since February. “I have never dealt with such caring, understanding, helpful people,” he says. “They are a blessing.”
Jeri Moore had been taking care of her husband, who had Parkinson’s disease, for two years before she attended a Hospice support group for caregivers. “They turned me around, because I was heading for disaster,” she says. “They helped me see that I wasn’t to give up all the things I was interested in, and they made me aware of things I had to do.”
Two years later, she called in Hospice to help care for her husband at home. He died the following week. After that, Moore went to Hospice for grief counseling and joined support groups.
“The groups are a lot of help, because you find out you’re not the only person in the world who is grieving and that you can discuss anything you want,” she says. “The counseling has been a big factor, too, and it’s all at no cost. And they really care.”. 
For more information on the services offered by FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care, please call (800) 213-3284.
In her
own words
Editor’s note: In 2005, Beverly Doerr realized that her 92-year-old mother could no longer take care of herself. Beverly and her husband, Bill, moved her mother into their home in Pinehurst. Beverly cared for her increasingly frail mother without any outside help for eight months—until last December when a friend suggested she call FirstHealth Hospice & Palliative Care. Here is Doerr’s story, in her own words.
 I hadn’t realized how incredibly tired and stressed I was. You’re pedaling so fast that you don’t even notice that you’re starting to lose ground. The will is there, but you can’t go on indefinitely providing 24-hour care without professional assistance.
Within 24 hours of calling Hospice, I had an army of support that put the wind back in my sails. It was a godsend. I now think of Hospice as providing two complete circles of support: the all-encompassing circle of care for my mother and the circle of help that I desperately needed to continue our goal of maintaining a sick parent at home.
I have been in business and have seen how many organizations function, but I have never witnessed as smooth and seamless an operation as FirstHealth Hospice. It has every professional attribute and people who are truly loving and caring. They possess the gift of bringing joy and comfort. They provide the medical, emotional, physical and spiritual support necessary to help the dying patient leave this world with dignity and in the familiar surroundings of home. They also provide the caregiver with advice, direction and all sorts of practical assistance, including much-needed respite care provided by well-trained professionals.
The Hospice staff, volunteers and caregivers offer something else whose value can’t be measured. It is simple companionship. What a joy it is to hear my mother ask, “Are my friends coming today?”
In fact, they have become more than friends. They are her extended family—and mine. I tell them when they leave, “Don’t get your wings caught in the door,” because they are like a flock of angels to us. I shudder to think where we would be without them. It is their presence and strength that enables me to care for my mother in the comfort of our home. |
|
