The Unfortunate Hospice post

I promised a post with recommendations for those working Hospice care. Hospice has to be hands-down one of the most difficult nursing care positions available. I hope I don’t come across overly critical, as I believe the service provided is invaluable, and people willing to do it are precious gems, every one. I hope that this post can be constructive, inasmuch as my tiny, sparsely populated little corner of cyberspace can be constructive. But there are some things that I have learned about birth, and now death, that relate.

1. Take your cues from the family. This is the most important piece of advice I could give anyone who is serving a family through a dramatic life event. Adapt your personality so that you become invisible. Completely invisible. We value your service, really we do, but we’d like to forget you are there. All the rest follow from this principal.

2. Watch the phone calls. Try to get as much into as few phone calls to the family as you can get. Once on continuous care, if you can take or make phone calls from outside or a completely separate area of the home, do so. If you cannot, limit your calls to those strictly necessary and no more than 5-10 minutes, and keep your voice down.

3. Be hyper-aware of the personal care issues related to the patient. The family should never have to point out that Dad has been sitting in wet clothing and soon-to-discover, his own filth for hours on end, before he gets changed. This is, after all, why you are there. If your immediate attention needs to be focused on other health issues, chart a note to yourself to remind you to change him ASAP.

4. Keep your personal life story to yourself. This one can be really awkward and difficult, since friends or family may ask you about yourself. But truthfully, these turn into long conversations focused on yourself, who, remember, is trying to be invisible. Try to curtail these conversations as kindly and quickly as possible.

5. Assume the family has normal intelligence and have not completely lost their mind in grief. Explain necessary procedures clearly, but don’t overly dumb down your instructions. It’s demeaning.

Our hospice providers were very nice ladies, and I am grateful that Pa was able to live out his time at home, able to receive visitors as desired and comfortable. But the experience could have gone even more smoothly had these things been kept to the fore of our interactions with the nurses.

Missing Pa

Nana has two photos that were blown up to 8×10, one used for the memorial and one that we gave her of Pa and one of our babies. They are propped on the floor waiting to be hung, and Eliza keeps crawling over to look and oh-so-gently brush her lips against his face.

Overheard from the direction of the Xbox

Simon: Sadie, go do what Daddy said, and I will tell you what buttons to push. Up, Up, Down. Sideways. Oh, you missed! Down, down, down, both ways. Up, Sideways. Yeah, like that!

Sadie: I know, I saw that one.

Sealey Clan Summer Basic Training

“Children, line up! When you can repeat these rules you will be issued your weapons (squirt pistols).”

Rule #1: No shooting anyone who doesn’t want to be shot. (Paul, stand up. What’s rule number 1? Paul: “3″)
Rule #2: Don’t shoot anyone in the head. (Paul, what’s rule number 2? Paul: “3″)
Rule #3: Protect your weapon.
Rule #4: Weapons belong in the weapons locker [plastic drawers in the entrance hall].

End first installment of summer training.

Death of a loved one + sick children =

A nasty bout of mastitis the afternoon before the memorial. I actually went straight to the doctors and got antibiotics it was so bad. Two shots of Rocephin kicked the fever, and now I’m on a course of Amoxicillin and feeling human again. But at least I remembered to offer the pain and suffering up for the completion of Pa’s sanctification.

Through the Veil

Our beloved Pa passed away on Wednesday in the early AM. He took a rapid turn for the worse on Tuesday, so with the wonderful support of friends willing to stay with the kids, we were able to be with him until nearly midnight. I am grateful to the Lord that He didn’t see fit to take him on one of the kids’ birthdays, which are coming up Monday and Tuesday this week. Blogging will probably be non-existent until I can somehow work out how to focus my thoughts again. I do have some things to say to hospice workers, which eventually I’ll have to post. Let’s just say, as an apprentice midwife there are certain things I’ve learned about how to BE through life’s transitions.

Anyone have favorite prayers for loved ones going through purgatory? Owen?

Bountiful Brunch

We usually go out with Brian’s extended family who live nearby–his parents, one set of Grandparents, his brother and wife, and his uncle and girlfriend–for brunch for Mother’s Day. With the failing health of Brian’s father, going out was out of the question, so Brian thought we should prepare a special brunch to share at “Nana’s” house.

Our menu included 4 varieties of quiche (spinach & ricotta, bacon & cheddar, ham & mushroom, and cheese), 4 varieties of crepes (sausage & cheese, cherry, apple and blueberry) with each of the sweet crepes having a sweetened cream cheese filling and topped with hot fudge or caramel sauce, eggs Benedict (provided by my brother-in-law), fruit salad, muffins, hashbrowns, bacon (lots and lots of bacon, as it’s Great-Granny’s special weakness), fried chicken, and a yogurt grape salad.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t eat again for the rest of the day. My husband is a superb cook, and keeps us quite well fed.

Faithfulness and the Fruit of the Spirit

A connection was made during Mass this weekend, answering a discussion I’ve had with another convert friend. If the Graces received through the Sacraments are real, and we believe they are, then why is it that so many Catholics are sleeping? Where is all that power going?

Brian Visaggio, over at Saint Superman, tied this one up with a tighter bow than I had postulated in the discussion with my friend. He makes this observation:

“I’ve written elsewhere (to which nobody replied sad.gif) that faith is a word we use to mean belief, but in the writing of the New Testament, the word they used meant fidelity, oathkeeping. It’s a word about how you act, how you live. Faith without works is dead because faith without works isn’t faith — you aren’t being *faithful*. Being faithful to your husband doesn’t mean you believe in him — it means you don’t cheat on him. Being faithful to the Lord, in the same way, means that you trust him to keep his promises and that you will keep yours.

To that end, faith, keeping faith, is all about how you live. This isn’t to say people earn their way into heaven, not at all, because it’s simply living the covenant God made with all humanity. “

Catholics sleep because they, in greater proportions than other pew sitters in other denominations, are not being faithful with what they have received. It is the catch-22 of “to whom more is given, more is expected.” We are given the actual life–body, blood, soul, and divinity–of Christ, and we are given an unbroken heritage from the apostles to the present, with all the spiritual and intellectual development of our two-thousand year history, and what do we, as average Catholics, do with it?

It is not that Catholics believe less than our Evangelical brothers and sisters, but that we have been given more to be faithful to, while being exhorted less to live up to that standard. Our heritage is full of examples of what the faithful Catholic can do with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As Pentecost nears, may we embrace all that we can be as Christians, by becoming more faithful to the truths that the Church has preserved for us.

Father-in-Law’s Health

He’s deteriorating rapidly, I’m afraid. He has cancer in his lungs, as well, and is on oxygen and having trouble breathing. He had a stroke this weekend, leading one hospital to diagnose cancer in his brain, but followup at a more advanced facility does not see cancer on their MRI. Ben, our oldest son, is struggling with the difference between magic and miracles, sacramentals as an aid to our faith, not as a power in themselves. Short story is that a former religious ed. teacher had given the kids some blessed medals, which Ben searched the house for and finally found to give to his grandpa soon after his diagnosis, but has now felt that he is somehow at fault for not finding them soon enough. It is terrible to helplessly watch my family suffer this way. All I can do is entrust all to God and try to explain to my kids what is happening, feeble as my attempts might be. I am so grateful for those that I know have lifted our family in prayer. My father-in-law’s mother is flying in this Friday. Please pray that he can be home to spend time with her by then. Also, he needs to resolve the fluid in his lungs so that he can get off oxygen and back into a treatment trial. Right now there are no treatments available to him.

Marriage and Family in the Movies

Brian and I avid movie watchers, but I have avoided reviewing them until now for two reasons: 1) most media today is almost entirely forgettable, and 2) I’m terrible at writing movie reviews.

The last couple weeks we’ve watched a couple of older recent movies: Fireproof and Dan in Real Life.

Knowing the background of Fireproof, the story written, directed and acted primarily by amateurs, I had very low expectations of it. I put it in the Netflix queue simply because I read a number of rave, though sparsely detailed, recommendations of it from a variety of sources. To put it simply, it mostly fell flat. I’ll be gracious about the acting, which, while not terrible, was certainly nothing to write home about. The meaning of the film is a message that needs to be broadcast widely and loudly throughout our society, that marriage requires sacrifice. Frankly, true happiness requires sacrifice. But the manner in which this story was told will almost ensure that the message is only heard by a very tiny minority of the population. To me, the movie clearly implied that only non-Christian marriages suffer difficulty, pain, crisis and hopelessness. Every single marriage depicted in the film underwent trials before the individuals involved made statements of faith, and improved dramatically after they began to trust in the Lord.

This story would have been strengthened by a more realistic portrayal of a variety of situations in which marriage requires self-sacrifice and reliance on Grace to achieve success and happiness. There are also significant problems with the way the story handled gender, respect, focusing solely on the husband’s choices and impact of his sins while completely disregarding the wife’s sins against their marriage, and an utter lack of artful story-telling and judicious editing.

The second film, Dan in Real Life, on the other hand completely blew me away. This sat on our instant watch queue for months. We’ve both enjoyed quite a bit of Steve Carell’s other work, and I was prepared for the usual incidental vulgarity. Instead, I discovered a little gem of a picture about family harmony, love, and again, sacrifice. This time, sacrifice was put in its proper perspective. The story begins with a parenting advice columnist, Dan, who is raising his three adolescent (and near adolescent) daughters alone. Along the way, we find out he was widowered. The bulk of the movie takes place during a family reunion vacation at the grandparent’s cottage. After arriving at the home, Dan is ushered out of the house by his perceptive mother, knowing he rarely takes time for himself. At a local book store, he encounters Marie, who agrees to coffee and pastries and then tentatively provides her phone number with the caution that she is in a new relationship. Predictably, this new relationship ends up being with Dan’s younger brother, Mitch, who introduces Marie to the family at the gathering.

Over the subsequent three days, Dan and the entire family fall in love with Marie. More than once, the suggestion arises to be honest about the budding relationship between them, but Dan decides that he needs to quell his feelings for her out of respect for his brother and as a father to his children. Various intuitive females amongst the family allude to something going on between Dan and Marie.

What makes this movie, though, is not necessarily the plot, which is fairly predictable, but the characters of the family members, the true caring and respect between all of them, the jovial, but compassionate interactions. Both Brian and I remarked that this is what we are striving for with our own family, and I think have a good hope of achieving. As a parental note, this story is about as clean as they come, though there is one awkward bathroom/shower scene in which Marie ends up in nude in a shower with the totally clothed Dan who takes the shortest route possible out of the situation.