tags: No One Dies Alone, death, hospice care, medicine
One of the jobs I held as I worked my way through school was a nurse's aide in nursing homes and convalescent centers. Even though it was never explicitly part of my job, I sat with people who were dying because I just couldn't bear to know that someone was dying in their room, alone, while the aides were chatting merrily in the breakroom.
But in fact, there are many people who are dying in hospitals, nursing homes and convelescent centers have neither family or friends who are available to sit with them at this crucial time. Some are homeless or are estranged from their families, or their families are too far away to be with them, and they lack friends. So what to do to provide comfort to those who are dying?
Several programs have been designed to meet this need. Among these efforts is No One Dies Alone, along with the Twilight Brigade, Compassion in Action. The former program was designed for people who are hospitalized while the latter program was specifically designed to serve veterans at Veterans Affairs hospitals and nursing homes across the country.
"It's really acknowledging our reality," said Cindy Mueller, a Mission Hospital employee who volunteers for No One Dies Alone. "We have homeless people. We have people who are estranged from their families, people who are isolated, people whose family members have all died before them. We have family members who are too exhausted to be there."
Such efforts are desperately needed. Although hospitalized patients routinely receive all the necessary medical care in their final days and hours of life, including close oversight by a doctor and nurses, these programs provide something that can fall between the cracks: a human presence.
"The two things people fear the most about dying are being in pain and being alone," said Sandra Clarke, a nurse in Eugene, Ore. who started No One Dies Alone. "We try to honor the wishes of the dying."
Cited story.
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I'm a web application developer for Peacehealth and my project was to create the application that helps coordinate the No One Dies Alone volunteers. One of the great things about working at a not-for-profit healthcare system is that I get to work on programs that serve our mission rather than our bottom line (though obviously I do a lot of that too).
One of our big source of hits on our Internet site (peacehealth.org) is this vendor product called the "Healthwise Knowledge Base". Basically it has a bunch of well-organized health information. We don't directly get any income from it, but we feel it's a useful service, and based on the Google hits, so does half the world too.
As an ex-biologist who stumbled into computer science, I also enjoy combining my various backgrounds. It's funny how much science shows up in day-to-day computer projects, especially statistics.
Everyone dies alone.
Five years ago, my grandmother and grandfather got on their boat and sailed down the intercoastal waterway to Florida, for what would be their final trip together. Not well from the beginning, both of them took a turn for the worse and wound up in care. My grandmother was put on the assisted living side of the facility, and my grandfather was in skilled care. He was supposed to move back in with her, but he never did. He had a heart attack over there, his third, and they couldn't bring him back.
It haunts me to know that in life, you can marry your childhood sweetheart and stay with her for 50 years, you can have five kids, twelve grandchildren, and three great-grands who love you, you can be a successful businessman, a member of a church, a local politican, a key figure in a small town, and still die all alone. I'm so glad that this program exists. It would comfort me to know that someone held his hand as he died.
Not a Mass will be sung then,
Not a Kaddish will be said,
Nothing sung, and nothing spoken,
On the day when I am dead.
Heinrich Heine
Dying unremembered and unmissed, that is my fear.
Optional please. I might want someone there, but I might just want to have some peace, quiet, and privacy during my exit.