Friday, August 18, 2017

Introduction #2 First / Last Responder

At the conclusion of my firefighting career, I opted to try and be a hospice volunteer to repay a debt for the exceptional care my dad received.  I was going to try to stay for a year or two and now in year four, I believe I will be doing this for a little bit longer.  My son pointed out to me that I have covered the spectrum of responding.  Firefighting (first responder) and Hospice (last responder).   I did find parallels between firefighting and hospice.  I arrived at these places expecting to be the hero and instead found an amazing group of everyday hero's.

What follows is a glimpse into the world of a hospice volunteer.   In the four short years, I have  been a hospice volunteer my view of the world has opened up in ways that I did not anticipate. 

I do not know what the typical hospice volunteer is like.  If my orientation class was any indication I am not a typical hospice volunteer.  The first day or orientation I drove my motorcycle to the meeting, walked in and felt almost immediately out of place.  The room was a mixture of students, who were working towards degree's in social work, and retired people.  All of them were immediately likeable.  They are the people I expected hospice volunteers to be, engaging, calm, patient and empathetic. 

We went around the room and everyone spent a couple of minutes describing what brought them to hospice.  I only listened to the first couple to know that my reason for being here lacked some of the depth that I was hearing from (others) people in the room.  I was here because I came to pay a debt for the care my own father received while he was under hospice care.  I know that the most heartfelt thank you's pale in caparison with actually giving your time back to a person or an organization that provided meaning in your life.  I owed hospice an amount of time that I needed to determine.  

I am a retired firefighter.  I have seen sudden and unexpected death.  There is no way to give the appropriate weight to traumatic injuries or illness that surrounds a death.  Seeing this has not given me any additional depth or insight on life.  Except that I have developed a habit of looking at ordinary things with an expectation that there is an extraordinary thing buried in there somewhere.  These people who died in my Fire Service career were for fleeting moments my brother, sister, mom, or dad.  It is always sad but you learn quickly to shield yourself from grief and grieving people.  It is a survival tactic that is needed, there is just too much to process.  Grief and grieving was left to the professionals or loved ones who had the training or relationship to provide the real long term support that is needed when a person dies.

Those first couple of hospice training meetings I considered leaving at break more than once.  I was stepping into the world I actively avoided for a lot of years. 

My father was in the care of hospice during the final weeks of his life.  You can tell when a person cares about what they do for a living and hospice people cared.  The RN's, LPN's, and CNA's were completely genuine in wanting to make my dad and family as prepared as we could be.   That care was familiar from my Fire Service days.

On the last night of his life, I was unknowingly rescued by one of those Hospice RN’s.   

I would sit in the room with my dad and read while he slept.  As was my practice when I was staying the night, I would walk down to the liquor store and get a couple of beers early in the evening.  A couple of beers and a good book were how I spent those nights with dad.  On the night he died, I met one of the off-duty hospice nurses who was in the liquor store and struck up a conversation with her.   In the 45 minutes (walk and talk time) that I was gone my dad died.  My mom and sister, in tears, told me that if I would have been home I could have performed CPR on my dad to revive him.   I would not have performed CPR on dad and I would have had to have a really difficult conversation with my mom that may have shaped how we viewed each other for years to come.  That beer walk and RN talk saved me.  My role was the son providing comfort, I am still grateful for that.  

I don't want to elevate the hospice volunteer above the people who do the real work for these patients and families.  RN's, LPN's, CNA's, Social Workers, and Clergy do all of the heavy lifting.  For the most part I get to see people when they are having the best part of their day.

I came to pay a debt and ended up staying on because I found so much amazing life in a place that was so close to death.  This journey has allowed me to meet people that I would have never met normally.  Instead of meeting dying people and their grieving families, I have met painters, poets, hot rod builders, writers, clerics, and people who lived the history I read about in my favorite books.  I expected to find grief in everyone and with the spouses, children, friends, and family I found an overwhelming amount of love.  I am not by any stretch of imagination a Hallmark kind of sensitive guy.  But there is a universal touch that everyone has seen and felt.  The gentle touch of a mother brushing back a kids hair from a hot forehead and touching the back of her hand to his head.  The three finger touch of a spouse or lover on the cheek or chin of a loved one while they slept.  The two handed arm rub of a long time friend.  You see this a lot in hospice and none of it looks like grief.  It looks and feels like love.

It is still humbling to think about how much all of these people have given to me at a time when they were facing their own death.   I hope what follows is the long overdue thank you I have for all my hospice patients who continued my education. 

For purposes of anonymity all of the patients I reference will be called John or Jane.  

One of my favorite patients, who suffered from advanced stages of Dementia, has called me John from the minute I sat down with her.  I have happily adopted the name since.   I have been seeing Jane for over 4 months now and I don’t know who John is to her.  I only know that John is cared for deeply by her and he brings her the briefest moment of contentment during our visits.   The locations that all these true stores take place are right in your own city, state, and nursing facility.  

If your family has lost a loved one while in hospice care, it is my hope you recognize the genuine love and respect that total strangers have had for your loved ones.  More importantly I hope you realize that your loved ones gave an incredible gift of love, hope, and life to those hospice volunteers who were lucky enough to know them.  Thank you for sharing your loved ones.

For me this has been an education about how to live life.  I hope you find something here that will make you want to do something you have been putting off for a while...

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