The Parkview Home Health & Hospice team recently received a letter from Cathy Phillip regarding care her mother, Julia Baldwin, received in 2018.
“I am writing to share my thankfulness for your service during my mother’s recent illness. We were blessed to have started mother with Home Health Services in our home in early November and she continued to receive these services until she was hospitalized on November 21, 2018. Your staff who visited our home were kind, caring and exceedingly professional.
On November 21, 2018 mother was admitted to Parkview LaGrange and then transferred to Parkview Regional the next day. She remained in that facility until Tuesday, November 27, 2018 at which time she was transferred to Miller’s Merry Manor in LaGrange. She entered the facility under the care of Parkview Hospice Services.
There is not enough paper or ink in the world to properly express our thankfulness for the services that mother received while in the care of Parkview Hospice at Miller’s. The nurse, the aide who came to bathe her, the phone support all were wonderful. The nurse was a wealth of information and support for our family as we were by mother’s side during the last weeks of her life.
I am confident that the staff of Parkview Home Health and Hospice is carrying on and continuing to give the same high level of care to their new patients. Please know that we will forever be grateful for the services and support mother and our whole family received. Since mother’s passing on December 28, 2018, we feel we were missing part of our family not spending time with members of your staff.”
The benefits of Hospice
Cathy shared that, after it became obvious that her mother was not able to stay in her apartment by herself, she had her mother move in with her. At the suggestion of her physician, the family made the decision to bring a hospice nurse in to start introducing her mother to how the program worked, including the intent of hospice and the kinds of assistance they could give her. “At that point, the nurse would stop by for a visit, check her blood pressure, and then leave.”
The night before Thanksgiving, Julia was taken to Parkview LaGrange and admitted. The next day she was transferred to Parkview Regional Medical Center to remove fluid from her lung. The following Monday, the family and Julia’s team of caregivers made the decision to admit her to Miller’s Merry manor with support from Parkview Hospice. “Primarily, the hospice nurses were another voice, outside of our family, encouraging her to eat and walk and to do the basic things that would be helpful for her,” Cathy said. “They were reassuring, and their presence gave her an opportunity to talk to someone other than us about how she was feeling. That was a nice outlet.”
Julia passed away on December 28.
For those facing the beginning of their hospice care journey, Cathy says to embrace the help. “The biggest thing is, you have to approach it from the standpoint of it’s additional support. Any time a person hears ‘hospice’ they think they’re dead, but it’s about more than that. If the system will allow, depending on what the needs are, an earlier introduction to hospice and what they can do to help is beneficial.”
