5 Lessons Hospice Taught Me About Living
I cannot tell you how many times I have been asked, “How can you work in a hospice and be sick yourself? Isn’t it awful?” For those of you who don’t know, I have been living with and trying to heal from a chronic illness, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (RSD/CRPS), for the last six years. I took a second year clinical internship for my master’s degree in a hospice for that precise reason – I wanted to grow personally, spiritually and professionally so that I could continue to uncover my authentic self and the secrets to a miraculous healing. And, no, it isn’t awful. It is personally, professionally and spiritually challenging, rewarding, fulfilling and soul feeding to have the opportunity to provide end-of-life care in the forms of support and counseling to individuals and their families in one of the most, if not the most, challenging times in their lives.
For all the incredible work hospices and their teams of professionals do, they often have bad reputations largely due to misinformation and misunderstandings of what hospices actually are. Hospice is specifically for comfort and palliative care and it does not hasten death. Patients and their families elect to have hospice care when curative treatments are no longer available or desirable and aggressive treatments have been ceased. To be admitted into the program, the patient has to be given a prognosis of less than six months to live and stopped all aggressive treatments. Most desirable, the patient is treated in the home-care setting unless there is a symptom or cluster of symptoms that cannot be managed in the home. In this case, the patient is treated in the inpatient unit where his/her acute symptoms can be better managed.
With an emphasis on personal choice, dignity, respect and quality of life, the services are designed to support each patient’s and family’s unique set of needs. The care is provided by an experienced and licensed interdisciplinary team, including physicians, registered nurses, social workers, clergy, certified nurses’ aides and trained volunteers. In particular, clinical social workers (me!) provide support to and counsel the terminally ill and their families and address a full range of psychosocial services from diagnosis through bereavement.
So, what have I learned from working in a hospice? Here are five lessons hospice and the dying have taught me about living:
1. Practice Gratitude. If you woke up on the wrong side of the bed in the morning, a trip to the hospice will set your day straight – and fast! Working in a hospice provides you with the daily opportunity to remember and acknowledge all of the blessings in your life. When you are assisting an individual at the end of life, suddenly your small (and sometimes big) struggles don’t seem so daunting anymore. It simply allows you to gain an often much-needed perspective. Take time each day to practice gratitude, big and small, and you will find your happiness and sense of fulfillment will increase dramatically.
2. Love Deeply. When you are at the end of life, all of your material possessions, diplomas, professional achievements and awards, etc. will mean nothing to you. What will matter is love: those who you love and those who love you. Take the time to focus on those you love now while you still can. Please, don’t wait until you are at the end of life to appreciate the healing and transforming properties of pure, unconditional, selfless love.
3. Be Understanding. While the mental health field often holds theory and treatment planning as two very important pieces to the therapeutic puzzle, providing a non-judgmental, compassionate, empathetic sounding board for your client/patient to feel understood is often just as or more powerful than putting into action a well thought-out treatment plan. In hospice care, you may only see a client and his/her loved ones once, which does not allow for elaborate treatment planning and execution. As human beings, we all have many things in common, and I firmly believe a desire to feel understood is a common thread that holds us all together. Take the time to sit with your loved ones and validate their feelings. Allowing them to feel understood lessens isolation and increases feelings of happiness, peace and contentment.
4. Be Supportive. Social work and mental health care, specifically talk therapy, are all about speaking and connecting with individuals, but sometimes, especially at the end of life when patients are unresponsive, your supportive presence is enough to make a large impact on the patient and his/her loved ones. Being a supportive presence includes all of those non-verbal communications and cues that communicate caring and compassion to someone in need of support, including gentle touch, eye contact, posture, facial expressions, and active, empathetic listening. You can be a supportive presence to those you love now by focusing less on problem-solving and more on practicing your non-verbal communication skills.
5. Suffering Can Be a Catalyst. What threatens to destroy you can actually save you. In suffering and complete ruin, we often find the power to transform ourselves and those around us. Suffering isn’t all bad, although it may seem that way at times. With suffering can come many lessons. Learn from your own suffering, but also learn from the suffering of others. My patients have taught me more in 10 months than I have learned in my 26 years of life.
While I didn’t experience a miraculous healing of my symptoms, and in fact, went through some of the most trying times physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, in working with the sick and dying, I have discovered how to truly live. By facing my own fears, I have learned how to ask some of life’s most daunting questions and experience levels of self-awareness, introspection and closeness to God/Source/Spirit/Creator that I never imagined possible. I have also experienced a profound clarity concerning my own life’s purpose (to help others and alleviate suffering), and that is a gift I could never put a price tag on.
Maria Mooney, MSW, LSW, is a raw vegan licensed social worker living with a progressive neurological disease, Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy/Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (RSD/CRPS). Follow along as Maria reflects on lessons learned through her health challenges, shares her experiences with alternative and traditional treatments, enjoys life to its fullest and heals herself at her blog!
Photo credit: _Libby_
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29 Comments
Thank you, Red! How sweet!
Hi Maria
There are many life experiences that teach us to live life to the full – Nursing on a Neonatal Unit for 18yrs gave me similar experience to yourself. It has given me the strength to cope with whatever life throws at me!
Well done for having the strength of personality to give so much when some would consider you already have enough to cope with.
Kind regards
Julie x
Hi, Julie! Thank you so much for your kind words. Working in any arena of health care really allows for personal growth and development.
Thanks for the lovely post. Would you be able to direct me in how to be trained as a volunteer for hospice? Thank you very much.
Love it! Maria really practices all of these points in her life. She shines from the inside out! Xo
Elisa, you’re so welcome. Most hospices have trained volunteer programs. All you have to do is find a local hospice and call them to see if they offer volunteer services. They can direct you on how to get started.
Lauren, HOW SWEET! Thank you so much! Love you! xoxo
What an wonderful story. I myself was an hospice patient the last 6 months of 2010. I have since decided to go back on dialysis and am awaiting a kidney. The hospice staff were very compassionate and understanding. Hospice is truly a gift and comfort when needed.
4 weeks a ago my Father in Law passed away. He had cancer and was in a Hospice for 2 weeks. Going and visiting him there was both wonderful and humbling. wonderful, to see him comfortable with what he knew was his in the very near future. Humbling because as you’ve said here, “When you are at the end of life, all of your material possessions, diplomas, professional achievements and awards, etc. will mean nothing to you.” I felt that very much with myself…and I wasn’t the lying in the bed making the most of last moments with my loved ones. But I was one in the room watching his family and friends saying good bye and coming to terms with what the void of this man in there lives would mean to them.
Thanks for sharing this Maria. Even though it’s only been 4 weeks since this experience for me, that time has found a way to dilute those lessons learned, watering them down with daily routines and work demands and personal needs/wants…the reminder was refreshing. Now I continue on more aware of how quickly these life lessons can be lost.
*Smiles & Hugs*
Angela
Hi, Stacey! Wow, what a remarkable story you have. I wish you the very best in whatever treatments you decide to do or not do. You are in my prayers.
Angela, beautifully said. I am so sorry to hear about your F-I-L. I send you and your family my prayers and condolences.
My great-grandmother passed away in a hospice setting. The nurses where absolutely amazing making sure they knew about her life and about her family. It gave me some comfort knowing that my grandmother passed away with people around her that cared for her and knew her even if it was only for a little while versus passing away on her own.
Erikka, I’m so sorry to hear about your great-grandma, but so pleased that you had a good experience with hospice.
Hi Maria!
Thanks so much for your inspiring, thoughtful and thought-provoking post!
I work as a nurse and I have never believed that we help anybody by focusing solely on their sorrows and limitations. Of course, I have great compassion for the suffering, and I’ll always try to soothe. (And you always know if you are soothing or not by the reaction you get.) But as soon as I can, I try to let them know that I also see their best and shining selves. And as it turns out, research supports this approach.
A research study at Case Western Reserve University has documented reactions in the human brain that show positive visioning is much more likely to have a positive effect than an interaction in which the “helper” focuses on the problem. The latter is almost always received as a negative judgment—even if it’s not meant to be.
That makes sense, doesn’t it? We know that people respond much better to a person they find inspiring and who shows compassion for them, rather than one who they perceive to be judging them. It’s obvious you provide that gift in your practice!
Thanks again for sharing!
Stacey, beautifully said, and I agree from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much for your super kind words about me and this post. I am so happy you enjoyed it! And keep inspiring others in your work!
Beautiful, Maria. Thanks for sharing your ‘old soul’ wisdom.
You are such an inspiration Maria!!
Thank you, Jen and Rainbow! So sweet!
Thank you so much, Jen and Rainbow!
Maria, this is so beautifully worded. Sharing the experience of working in hospice with you, I saw how much it affected us all, but reading your post shows how much you have reflected on the experience and folded it into your identity. You’ve truly gained everything you possibly could from this internship and I’m in awe that you were able to give so much at a time that was so personally difficult for you. Bravo (and an early congrats on licensing…only a matter of time and you’re “official”)!!
Thank you SO much, Sarah! What a beautiful message! It was such a pleasure working with you. I really miss our time together. Thank you for always being a wonderful source of support to me. xoxoxo
Maria, This is beautiful. I love it, I’m saving it on my “favorites” and sending it to friends.
Hi, Natalia! Thank you so much. I’m so glad you enjoyed it.
I have had two family members pass in the last six months. My grandfather was in hospice for 3 weeks and my father was sick and never made it to hospice. These experiences changed my life and changed the person I am today. I view death in a very different light then the people around me. I have plans to volunteer in a hospice to share my love and strength because I know families need it. Thank you for this beautiful post!
Hi, Meg! I’m so sorry for your losses, but it is wonderful that you plan to give back through volunteering. It is truly a wonderful population to work with.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Maria. Such a heartwarming and beautiful post, despite the seemingly sad nature of the subject. Thanks for the reminder to appreciate everything that I am lucky enough to have and all the people that I am lucky enough to love! :) xx
Hi, Hayley! Thank you so much for reading and enjoying this post. Always thinking of you xoxoxo
Hi Maria! What a lovely piece of writing about your experiences and insights. Thank you for putting into writing what many of us feel. It’s been an honor to know you in your internship. I’m looking forward to having you join us for lunch one day soon! Love and miss you! Tracy xoxo
Hi, Tracy!!!!! What a lovely message! Thank you SO much for all YOU and everyone at Haven have done for me. It has changed me as a person for forever, and I couldn’t be happier :-) I love you and miss you, too. You all mean so much to me. I’m so lucky to know you. xoxoxo
Amazing, absolutely amazing. You are a wonderful clinical social worker with great insight.
June 30, 2011