Hospice Volunteering: Take One

On Saturday morning I arrived at the nursing home which I was going to be volunteering at. I had to go through a brief training session, which basically explained to me what was acceptable/unacceptable to talk to these patients about, what I should expect, and some general information about the patients that I would be encountering. The typical patient that is put on hospice is expected to live 6 more months or less. The first patient that I visited and talked with was an elderly woman who was very friendly and glad to see me. I learned that she was not diagnosed with anything specific; she was just dying of old age. In other words, her body was just giving out after having worked so hard for so long. In my training I learned that when patients are dying of old age an obvious sign that they are slipping is that they stop drinking and their body produces very little urine and it is not diluted at all. The lady that I was talking with told me that she had suffered from 3 minor strokes within the last month, which made it a little bit hard to understand her but I was able to make out what she was saying after I got used to it. It was disheartening to think that this nice old woman may die before the next time I get to see her.

Cancer Patients

For my service learning project, I will be volunteering with hospice services either in the Stevens Point Area or through the hospital in my home town. For those of you who don't know, people involved with hospice are not nurses, but when someone is dying they can give them pain medication and basically keep them as comfortable as possible as they are dying. I plan to spend at least an hour or two a week visiting with one of these hospice patients, and hopefully I will be able to learn more about their illnesses and teach them a few things also. When I find out what the patient is suffering from, I will research all that I can in order to be able to answer any questions that they might have. I am doing this because I want to be a doctor, particularly an Oncologist (cancer), and I'm hoping to learn more and learn how to interact with people that suffer from things like cancer. I will also be learning on my own about what they are suffering from as I research it independently.