Peaceful passages

WASILLA — When Harriet Smith’s sister was dying from lung cancer many years ago, she acted as her caretaker because she couldn’t afford to stay in the hospital. Today, as Smith struggles with her own terminal heart failure, it’s her daughter and Mat-Su Regional Hospice returning the favor.

“So it’s kind of come full circle for her,” Smith’s 54-year-old daughter, Denise Statz, said Friday. “And this is the second time Hospice has helped our family. The first time was six years ago when my father was terminal with lung disease and I was trying to take care of him by myself. It was exhausting.”

As the owner of Nonessentials gift shop in downtown Palmer, Statz said it was difficult to admit her father was dying at 88 and that she needed help with him. He’d been so strong and so independent for so long.

But when she finally learned about the wide variety of services offered by Mat-Su Regional Hospice that are usually covered by Medicare and other insurances, she opened her door and let them in.

“The exhaustion was becoming debilitating for me. I hadn’t slept in months,” Statz said. “So a wonderful, caring group of people helped us in the last months of his life and another wonderful group is helping my mother now. I can’t imagine being without them.”

Hospice Care provides skilled nurses, physicians, social workers, personal care aides, chaplains and volunteers to help families deal with the emotional, physical and spiritual needs associated with terminal illnesses in the comfort of their own homes or care facilities.

Although not a 24-hour service, it usually provides enough individualized attention to make a patient’s last months or days as comfortable and peaceful as possible for everyone involved, according to Dr. Jeffrey Melendez, Mat-Su Hospice medical director.

“It really is a life-saver for families,” Melendez said Wednesday. “There’s an emotional rollercoaster that comes with dealing with a dying loved one and hospice helps smooth it out a little. We also provide a vital role in pain management for the patient. When someone’s in a lot of pain, they can’t enjoy their families and friends as much as they’d like.”

Hospice Volunteer Services Coordinator Ginny Stocker said volunteers are always needed to visit with patients, do light chores — or just hold someone’s hand for awhile.

With 23 Valley families in the hospice program now, the 40 volunteers currently on the list are not always available to lend a hand, she said.

“Since they’re volunteers, we still have gaps in making sure everyone’s covered, and we especially want to be sure we have people in all corners of the Valley in case there’s a need in Chickaloon or Talkeetna. We don’t want people to have to drive long distances,” Stocker explained, adding that many volunteers have had personal experiences with the death of a relative or close friend that inspires them to give back. “We especially encourage men to volunteer because we only have three right now and sometimes men feel better talking to another man.”

One of those men is Albert Prost. He and his wife, Lyndi, volunteer with hospice after being ambulance volunteers in the Butte for many years prior.

When Albert’s sister was dying of cancer in Wisconsin, hospice was there for her and her loved ones, Lyndi said.

“She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer right before her birthday and three weeks later she died,” she said. “So it was real quick, but I think it would have been even tougher on everyone if she hadn’t gone through hospice.”

Although they don’t visit homes together, sometimes they end up helping the same patient — just in different shifts. She said they both get a lot of satisfaction from knowing they are helping relieve someone’s loneliness or making them smile for awhile.

Stocker said potential volunteers first undergo a thorough background check and are given a drug test to make sure they don’t have drug dependency issues or other characteristics that might interfere with their ability to handle the job.

Then they go through 20 hours of training that covers everything from the stages of death and grief to safety procedures and cultural sensitivity.

“The key thing for volunteers to remember is that they are a guest in someone’s home and are there to provide a specific service,” Stocker said. “They need to be aware of their professional boundaries and to be sensitive to a variety of needs and emotions. Mostly, though, they just need to be able to see the person as a real person, not just as a patient in need.”

Hospice Chaplain Susan Knight joined the effort about a year ago after serving as a Methodist minister for 18 years. She said she was especially inspired to get involved after seeing her own father die in a California hospital from a brain stem hemorrhage in 1998.

Having hospice for him would have made all the difference, she believes.

“We didn’t know any better at the time,” she said. “He held in there for more than 10 months and they had to resuscitate him twice. We really could have used some guidance on all of that, but we weren’t listening.”

Knight, who also commutes to Anchorage every Sunday to serve as pastor at a Presbyterian church, said she’s careful not to push a certain faith or spiritual belief on patients and their families.

She said she dresses in business attire and doesn’t even wear a cross.

“I’m not there to convert anyone,” she said. “I’m mostly there for bereavement purposes and to add some comfort, if needed.”

Knight still gets goose bumps when recalling a Hatcher Pass service she performed for a hospice patient’s family one stormy day.

“It was pouring down rain and they had a tent set up for the service,” she said. “They had balloons in his favorite color and just as they released the balloons, the clouds parted and the sun came out, framing the balloons perfectly, as if he was being welcomed into the heavens.”

Stocker will hold training classes for volunteers during the last week of April and the first week of May. For more information on becoming a volunteer, call Stocker at 352-4848. For more general information on Mat-Su Hospice, contact Juliane Pier at 352-4800 or visit matsuregional.com

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.McKee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.