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Hospice, Memory Lane combine forces at center |
| Channels » Home » News » Hospice, Memory Lane combine forces at center |
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July 21, 2004 |
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This article by Haley Howard was reprinted with permission from the July 21, 2004, edition of the Smithville (Miss.) Herald.
Donna Armstrong needed help when she found out her mother, who was a resident at the Beverly Healthcare’s Memory Lane in Smithville [Miss.], had terminal cancer. And hospice stepped in to help.
Anna Rosalie Relf died July 9, nearly 15 years after learning she had Alzheimer’s disease and just eight weeks after she was diagnosed with cancer. Armstrong saw her mother suffer through a disease that stole her life. While she may think cancer is the lesser of the two evils, Armstrong is certain that the support both Memory Lane and hospice gave her during her mother’s illnesses was a godsend.
Memory Lane, the Alzheimer’s Unit at Beverly Healthcare, was Relf’s home through the last stages of her disease. Armstrong heard about Memory Lane through various people who all had good things to say about the facility. She visited Beverly and found something different about its Alzheimer’s unit.
“You could tell it was a very loving Alzheimer’s unit,” Armstrong said. “They make them feel like real people.”
Ever since Relf was in Memory Lane’s care, Armstrong took an active interest in the facility. She participated in many of the activities, donated supplies for the residents and even started a tradition of painting the patients’ nails. Through it all, she saw her mother’s disease take her memories as a former teacher, bookkeeper and hunter away.
“It’s probably one of the nastiest diseases a person can have,” Armstrong said. “You watch them slowly lose the person they were.”
While Memory Lane staff helped keep her mother active and comfortable through the latter part of the disease, they also helped her understand and cope with the disease. She described one staff member as her rock, supporting her through the difficult times.
Memory Lane staff were there for Armstrong through her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, and they were there, along with hospice, when her mother was dying of cancer.
The two entities worked together for Relf’s sake, and are forging a relationship that will keep patients and their families well cared for in the future.
“Adding hospice to Beverly would be a wonderful thing,” Armstrong said. “It’s (Alzheimer’s) a hard disease to understand.”
Hospice Preferred Choice of Kansas City has been a presence at Beverly, to assist in the dying process of terminal patients, but the entity has had a greater presence since March at Memory Lane, according to the unit’s director, Sara Meinking.
“Our goal is that we’re wanting them to be visible in the unit,” she said.
Meinking said that the more aware families are of the hospice services available to them, the more likely they are to utilize their services when families need them most.
Hospice usually steps in when a patient’s life expectancy is six months or less, and is there to help with pain control and managing symptoms more than focusing on curing the patient.
It is a service that is covered under Medicare, and Alzheimer’s patients in their later stages of the disease can benefit from their care.
According to Preferred Choice executive director Elaine Moore, hospice has always had the ability to offer services to Alzheimer’s patients at Memory Lane, but it is expanding its services to them by providing weekly chaplain visits, group activities such as barbeques, and adding volunteers to support the unit’s staff.
In most cases, hospice care isn’t eligible to Alzheimer’s patients until they are in the seventh and final stage of the disease. Signs include the patient’s speech is compromised [sic] of less than five words a day, they are non-ambulatory, and can no longer smile.
Hospice staff help identify those signs and step in to help patients through their final days.
“Certain patterns of communication are specific for Alzheimer’s patients,” Moore said. “There’s a normal progression, and the more education we have in those areas, the more services we can provide. What we are striving to do is combine our expertise.”
While hospice will continue their normal care for final-stage Alzheimer’s patients at the facility, such as supplies and pain management, it will also be available for families and patients before that final stage as well, something Armstrong knows can be very beneficial.
“They (hospice) make it more bearable,” she said. “These people have a lot of answers.”
Armstrong said they got her mother a special bed, wheelchair, and were there four or five times a week, helping fill in the spots when she couldn’t be there. And while she learned a lot from hospice staff during the final stage, she said she could have utilized them throughout the various stages of Alzheimer’s.
“I wish I would have had hospice there at that time,” Armstrong said.
Meinking hopes that Memory Lane’s new relationship with hospice will continue to help people like Armstrong and Relf. And the biggest change is the extra support for residents and families.
“It provides families the reassurance that there are outside services available they can utilize here,” she said. “It’s another resource we’re providing to our families.”
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