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www.celtic-connection.com
SEPTEMBER 1999
Hospice Helps the Dying Deal with Death
Helping to Heal Grief With CleansingTears
By MAURA McCAY VANCOUVER — Michael Lagan died peacefully, surrounded by the friends who had cared for while he was ill. His story might have had a vastly different ending had it not been for the work of one very caring woman — Tyleen Katz.
Michael immigrated to Canada from Derry in Northern Ireland back in the Fifties and moved up north to Prince George, where he worked in the lumber industry. He married and had a family, but unfortunately life sent challenges to Michael's life and his marriage did not survive. He drifted away from his children and eventually found himself living in a small room on Vancouver's downtown eastside, one of Canada's toughest neighbourhoods. It was here that he was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Then, fate intervened and allowed Michael to find a safe haven at the May Gutteridge Community Home — May's Place as it is affectionately known — a six-bed hospice managed by Tyleen Katz located on Powell Street. It was also here that Michael met John O'Hara, who became his friend and one of his main care-givers during his last days of his life.
When Michael arrived a Majr's Place he was very sick. Katz said, "his cancer had taken away his ability to walk. One of our' doctors who was also Michael's doctor knew about his situation and that's how he got on the waiting list.
After his admission, his health began to significantly improve. Katz said, "He did really well, then he went downhill and then he came back up. So, he was up and down up and that is why we kept him and never moved him off to long term care facility." Michael stayed at May's Place for 11 months and was one of the longest residents they've ever had.
To help him make peace with his life, hospice staff assisted him to reconnect with displaced family members. Katz said, "We tracked down his ex-wife who came to visit him once and one of his daughters supported him until the end."
TYLEEN KATZ
He also received great comfort from the support of John O'Hara, a volunteer who became one of his main care-givers. John has since left Vancouver for Washington, D.C. where he has joined the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. The irony is that Michael passed on just as John was making final preparations to leave for his new post.
Katz said, "In fact John was actually meant to be on a plane the
MICHAEL LAGAN
MICHAEL LAGAN is served dinner by John O'Hara and another volunteer at May's Place.
night that Michael died but he was on stand-by and he didn't make the plane. He came back in because Michael's last request had been that the staff who were available have a glass of champagne at his bed-side before they moved him. So, at 10 o'clock that morning we were drinking champagne at his bed-side. It doesn't sit well in my stomach that early in the morning."
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It was Tyleen Katz's vision which helped establish both the May Gutteridge Community Home and the new St. James Cottage Hospice, located in Burrard View Park, on North Penticton Street. A newly restored heritage building which began life in the 1920s as an orphanage.
Thirty-one years ago Katz left England to work as an executive secretary at McGill University in Montreal where she married a professor — Sid Katz — and raised two sons before deciding to fulfill a childhood ambition and become a registered nurse after her family moved to British Columbia.
Five years in the family practice unit at Shaughnessy Hospital exposed her to palliative care nursing and determined her destiny. She answered St. James' call to open May's Place and in October 1989, with the help of a small team of nurses, a nurse's aide, volunteers and a part-time music therapist, the first hospice was launched.
"This is incredibly fulfilling work," says Katz. "It provides a profound challenge, because you are not just dealing with the symptoms of" a terminal disease. You are responding to the emotional and spiritual needs of people coming to terms with their mortality."
In fact, admission to one of the hospice's simply but comfortably furnished third-floor rooms gives most patients a new lease on life. "If they have been in a hospital, they may not have dressed for weeks...here they dress, go out alone and enjoy autonomy."
She says the hospice philosophy works particularly well on the east side, where people are suspicious of authority and shun rules and regulations. In the past, many would die unnoticed in rooming houses rather than seek help. Those solitary deaths prompted May Gutteridge, founder of the St. James Community Service Society, to begin the drive for the hospice 14 years ago.
Since there are very few such facilities in Vancouver, the waiting list for admission is long and continues to grow. Katz said, "Ironically, since the opening of Cottage Hospice this May, the list has grown longer.
"This is probably because some social workers had stopped putting people on the waiting list because they knew the chances of getting in were so slight. So now, with ten additional beds, the waiting list is even longer. This just shows the need for more such facilities."
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To learn more about either volunteering or making a contribution to May's Place and the St. James Cottage Hospice, call the St. James Community Service Society at (604) 606-0321.
JO ANN CREAN
By CATHOLINE BUTLER
VANCOUVER — Back in the early Eighties, Ellen Kearney Crean of Kearney Funeral Services was inspired to start the British Columbia Bereavement Foundation. This came about as a result her own personal experience with grief as she dealt with the death of both her mother and her brother within a short period of time.
On a professional level, she also saw and heard many families served by her organization who were struggling to come to terms with their grief but finding nowhere to turn for assistance in their time of bereavement and isolation.
Ellen decided to call a meeting and invite the different support groups such as nurses, doctors, psychologists, clergy, ministers to sit down and discuss forming a network to assist the bereaved in their time of need. From these initial talks, the British Columbia Bereavement Foundation was formed.
Recently, I spoke with Ellen's daughter-in-law, Jo Ann Crean, who is now President of the British Columbia Foundation of Bereavement at the Kearney Funeral Services location on West Broadway. Today, she continues the work started by her mother-in-law.
Crean remarked, "Quite often, we see people making funeral arrangements who appear to be functioning semi-normally, but they are really in a state of shock and just managing to make it through.
We will offer them information about bereavement follow-up but we find that often these people will not call us or seek that support because it's very difficult to admit that you need help, even to yourself.
"We will try to keep in touch through the grapevine. We might hear that an individual is not doing very well, so we might phone,
or find a friend of a friend who can phone and make contact and encourage them to attend a support group, because when it comes to grief, experience has shown us that the most effective way of dealing with grief is to talk about it, over and over again.
"Bereavement is like healing a wound, it's like cleansing the wound. The crying is the cleansing to help it heal. Even though I have over 20 years of experience in the field, I wouldn't call myself a grief counsellor because I haven't had the technical training. The work I do is on a volunteer basis and all I am offering is support and a listening ear and I think that's more important in some ways."
Crean keeps well informed of what's going on in the community with the different hospice, palliative care and grief recovery programs. She also attends special workshops on grief, in addition to giving workshops and special training programs.
The Bereavement Foundation receives from five to 10 calls a day and those people are all helped immediately by volunteers who will listen to them and recommend a bereavement support group in their area to assist them.
Crean said, "there are other situations where the person calling the Grief Foundation wishes to remain anonymous. They don't want to attend a support group meeting, but they need to speak to someone. This can go on for two or three months at various intervals and we will just listen and talk to them. It is liberating for these people to be able to speak in complete confidence. They can just talk and say what they need to with no fear of retribution, no fear of exposure and no fear of weakness. It's just a very equal basis and really quite effective."
Crean suggests that for anyone wishing more information or in need of grief bereavement counselling, most funeral homes now have some type of follow-up program or what they call after care, or bereavement follow-up.
Also, hospice programs have grown immensely in the past decade and they are well connected with what is happening in their communities and can recommend various bereavement support groups to help individuals in their time of grief.
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For more information on the B.C. Bereavement Foundation, write to Box 53530, 984 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1K7. Call (604)738-9950, or toll free 1-877-779-2223. Fax (604)730-1015 or E-mail: bcbf@intergate.bc.ca. Visit their website at: www.intergate. bc.ca/bcbereavement.
Kearney Funeral Services
Broadway Chapel
1096 West Broadway „, nf..r.
Vancouver, V6H 1E3 (604) 736-0268
Columbia - Bowell Chapel
219 Sixth Street. .«„ New Westminister, V3L3A2 (604) 521-4881