Published: September 29, 2007 08:41 pm         

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORAL: Valley’s Hospice has made a local impact

For all of our country’s innovations, contemporary Americans have been backward in one notable area: accepting our mortality. Maybe that’s because death seems like a contradiction (or a failure) to a nation of can-do problem solvers.

But we are mortal, and the relatively young U.S. hospice movement is helping millions of people, not only to accept that fact, but to leave this life as gracefully and comfortably as we possibly can.

Locally, this important work is being performed by Hospice of the Wabash Valley, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. In tandem with the Visiting Nurse Association, Hospice has cared for thousands of patients and their family members since its founding in 1982.

While Hospice services are covered by some private insurers and both Medicare and Medicaid, the program relies on donations for nearly half of its funding. As part of the United Way agency, Visiting Nurse Association of the Wabash Valley Inc., Hospice received more than $20,000 of this year’s $50,000 United Way contribution.

Eight registered nurses make up the core of Hospice here. They are aided by 25 trained volunteers and a dedicated administrative staff. Their combined efforts have elevated end-of-life care from the desultory to the deeply meaningful. More and more, they enable the common wish of most humans — to die in peace at home — to come true.

Hospice is for terminally ill people who have been given no more than six months to live by their physician. One of the many beauties of the program, however, is that the care continues as long as a patient is alive and in need.

As most of us already know, death is not as predictable as birth. Each individual has his or her own timetable. Health care professionals can estimate stages of decline and Hospice staff can help patients and their loved ones prepare for probable scenarios, but nothing is absolute. Until the end.

Veterans of the Hospice movement have long taught that their approach simply recognizes the natural cycle of life and accommodates death’s universal role in that cycle. Every day, in home bedrooms and dimly-lit hospital rooms, Hospice workers help people complete the cycle.

They also affirm that dying can be an extension of a life well-lived and that “quality of life” can be a realistic human focus until the moment we draw our final breath.