Meg Randle, Nurse © KUED 2000

Meg Randle, Nurse

Seven years ago, I knew I had come home to a type of nursing that offered me my greatest work satisfaction.

Hospice is often noted as a type of work that is a privilege. We are meeting individuals at a very intimate time in their lives in their home setting to assist them in preparing for life's greatest journey toward death. Reassuring them that along with the hospice team, one need not suffer or be alone. Death is not a failure but a transition that can be prepared for and supported.

Likening to a midwife, we neither hasten nor prolong the dying process. Through understanding and management by many disciplines, the hospice team can prepare for what some say is the birth we call death.

When I first started in hospice, I used to meet families who said their doctor had just told them there was nothing more they can do. To expand on that statement I would say there might be nothing more that can be done to cure or stop the disease process but there is a lot of care that can be offered to you, the individual and support for you, the caregiver.

Thankfully, we are moving towards distinguishing between definition of the end of treatments and the beginning of need for more care. And through education and promotion, people are empowered to talk about death and dying and choices they have for care. Hospice is one of those choices!

Proper use of pain and symptom management techniques are only part of the tools supporting the dying process. As a member of the hospice team, we can assist in coming to an understanding of the person's unique emotional and spiritual and physical characteristics that make up the dying process. Though all of us die, no one death experience is alike. With a supportive environment and knowledge of tools to aide in care, death can be as gentle as a flower folding in on itself, without crisis or trauma. And the grief shared and supported can be just as natural. Hospice may not ever be all things to all people, but the basic promise of not dying alone and not dying in pain is worth exploring sooner rather than later.

As a hospice nurse and team member, I believe we are there as an outer circle providing knowledge and tools creating a container for family and friends and caregivers to give their love and wisdom from the inner circle by releasing the individual gracefully into death through their care and presence.

Though hospice works, outcome might be considered a loss, I feel through hospice I gain insights into my own life from knowing the dying experience and the ways it can unfold. We may not change the outcome of death but it can be a shared journey and we can walk it together.

To witness someone crossing over and the loved ones who are at their side is a humbling opportunity. Keeping myself out of the way while supporting the care is my work. Daily I witness these intimate experiences and I cannot help be changed by those lives whom I passed through. I am changed - whether for a moment or a year or a lifetime.

I acknowledge a deepened reverence for life, sometimes it is as simple as hugging a little tighter at the end of a long day. Working in hospice can remind me to stop, take a deep breath, and appreciate the gift of life in the form of a budding tree, a puppy on my path, or the steadfast beauty of the mountains. Sometimes, even a pile of dishes in the sink can remind me of pleasures of sharing a meal with loved ones.

There is a Rumi saying: "There are two gifts in life that are rarely opened, love and death." In hospice, I see them as both being opened over and over. For that reason, I love being part of the hospice experience.