26 March 2005

Compassionate, My Ass

While these nutjob protesters grandstand outside of the Woodside Hospice claiming to be trying to help someone live (who is already dead, despite their fantasies), they are causing grief to the other patients and families being served by the hospice. Apparently, those people's rights and privacy don't matter to the activists, I guess.

My grandmother was in this very same hospice a little over two years ago (which means I probably passed by Terry Schiavo at some point without knowing it). It is run by some of the most incredible, caring people in the world. My grandmother was smart enough to have made her wishes known in writing with a living will, fortunately. She did not want to have her life prolonged artificially, and she let us know that.

My grandmother developed MDS (myelodisplastic syndrome) which caused her bones to stop producing red blood cells. She received regular blood transfusions in her home via hospice, but her doctors told her that at some point she would no longer be able to receive any benefit from transfusions and they would have to stop (I don't remember the exact reasons they gave, something about iron build-up). After they stopped, she would begin to deteriorate as the anemia took effect. She eventually had to be put into the Woodside center where she would be able to have round-the-clock care (our family had been taking shifts staying with her at her house, feeding her, helping her onto the toilet, etc. until she got to the point that she could no longer get out of bed).

At Woodside, she had trained professionals who took care of her and allowed her to spend her last few days with dignity and in peace. She was made comfortable with drugs to soothe whatever pains she had and she was given water and what food she could eat. Eventually the anemia took her consciousness and she was no longer given food (which her body was rejecting anyway, her organs were all shutting down). My mother and her sister Vera sat by her bedside and used a little sponge to apply water to her lips and inside her mouth to keep them moist...to keep her comfortable. She wasn't able to even drink water at that point.

We spent the time by her bedside telling her that we loved her, even though she couldn't hear us anymore. My mom told her over and over how good a mother she had been, until she took her last few breaths.

We had a small memorial gathering for her at Woodside after she was gone and had been cremated (which my sister neglected to attend, but don't get me started on that). Just family and a few of the hospice workers who had taken care of her both at her home and at the center.

While she was in the center with my grandmother, my mom had noticed that the staff had trouble with laundry. They had only one or two laundry carts and because of health code regulations they had to use carts for soiled linens (and trust me, in a hospice they get a LOT of soiled linens) so of course there was a lot of laundry stress for the staff. My mom decided to donate a few carts (these are heavy duty hospital carts, not cheap) to the hospice in my grandmother's memory to help make the job a little easier for the staff that had made my grandmother's last days the best they could be.

Do the protesters realize the good that a hospice does? Do they realize that there are people in there trying to spend their last bit of time on earth in peace? Do they realize the harm they are doing in their vain, politically motivated attempt to 'help' a woman who should have already been buried years ago?

When their loved ones are dying I hope nobody comes to bully them and intrude on their peace. Part of me wants the opposite - to make them go through the same suffering they are inflicting on the Schiavo's and the other families at Woodside- but nobody...NOBODY deserves that. Not Terry, not anyone.

"They've taken away hospice's greatest quality, that it is peaceful and serene and quiet and calming — and it's not fair," Johnson said.

It sure isn't.

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