Hospice, for Real

I've finally done all the preliminary training and paperwork to be a hospice volunteer. Last week Toby and I went to our first volunteer training meeting, and the coordinator asked us to come to the front of the room and introduce ourselves. She then told the others how excited hospice is to start this program. She and the hospice director had to jump through a few administrative hoops, as they hadn't had an official animal therapy program before, but the way has now been cleared for future visits. I got my required flu shot after the meeting, courtesy of the hospital, which saved me/my insurance company a few bucks. Nice benefit, if you happen to like getting holes poked in your arm. I'm not really complaining. Maybe it will save me a couple of sinus issues this winter.

I was also asked to help edit a draft of their new animal therapy team policy. I feel honored to be the one to help them start the program. It gives me a chance to make sure the standards are kept high enough to ensure the professional conduct of hospice therapy teams. They were adapting a policy used by another hospital, which was geared entirely toward dogs, so I had to make quite a few changes to include other therapy animals. I also changed all the "pet therapy" terms to "animal therapy," explaining that it connoted a higher, more professional level of practice. Anyone can bring a family pet to hospice for a social visit, but only a trained animal therapist can bring a registered therapy animal to a facility and function in the professional manner required to ensure a safe and effective visit. The new policy states that only registered therapy animals will be allowed to make therapy visits, which I believe is a very wise move, both for the benefit of the patient and the liability of the facility.

Today I made my first official visit to the hospice wing, and decided to bring Teddy, my white cat. Unfortunately, only one patient was able to visit with us today. The woman I've visited with twice before, with Toby, appears to have entered the last stages of her stay there. She spends most of her time sleeping, and probably won't be able to visit with us again. I know the day will come when I will make my regular Tuesday morning pilgrimage, and find that her room is occupied by another fleeting soul. Such is the way of hospice, and I must try to accustom myself to it.

The woman who visited with us today is not as lucid as her family would like, but she did brighten up when I put Teddy on the bed beside her. We helped her pet him, moving her hand over his plush fur. She smiled for awhile, made some simple conversation about kittens, then dozed off. That's how patients sometimes signal the end of our visit, and we just quietly pack up and make our exit.

Since we had no other patients to visit, we spent a few minutes in some of the offices in the hospice's nursing station and administrative hallway, bringing a little therapy to those on the front lines. I sometimes think this is just as important as visiting with the patients. Seeing so much sorrow and death has to take a toll on the staff's collective psyche as well. I'm told that some of them -- as well as the volunteers -- occasionally need bereavement counseling when one of their favorite patients dies. It must be difficult to remain objective at times. I'm almost grateful that I'm only there once a week, and don't have time to form a close relationship with any of the patients.

Being in the hospice really makes you take a hard look at your own mortality, and that of your loved ones. I'm lucky that my parents are still fairly young (in their early seventies), but my father did give us a scare when he coded after heart surgery a couple of years ago. Working in hospice brings it home to me how lucky we were that he made a full recovery. I need to do some heavy thinking about my own health, and what I can do to maintain and improve it as I grow older.