Loving care at the end of life can make death a peaceful experience. Hospice care and good palliative care are far preferable to asking for euthanasia or assisted suicide. Hospice care can provide the assistance in dying that the proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide claim to offer. 

Tammy Camposilvan knows that. She cared for her mother and watched her die in peace at the The Kemp Hospice in Hamilton. Teri Crockford knows it also. A registered nurse with bachelors and masters degrees, she is acting director for the hospice.

Both women were part of a panel discussion hosted by our neighbour, Hamilton Right to Life, on the evening that Bill C-384 was voted down.

Tammy’s mother had had numerous operations and periods in hospital and although she didn’t feel she was ready for the hospice, she had reached the stage where neither she nor Tammy nor Tammy’s sister could manage her medications. Tammy and her sister were in the same situation as many people with elderly parents - both working and having families of their own.

A ’spa’ 

When her mother arrived at the hospice, Tammy said she remarked that it “felt it was like a spa.”

 Tammy and her sister and their children were able to visit often and any time.

“I can’t say enough about it,” she told the Hamilton Right to Life coffee and dessert evening. “It’s just an amazing place to be at that stage in life.”

The hospice has 10 beds, Teri Crockford said, which is a size that helps it to feel intimate and home-like. People go there when, in general, they have a life expectancy of no more than three months.

Management of pain

“They know they are dying,” Teri said. “We don’t need to be involved in giving the bad news.

“Our philosophy is to make each patient as good as can be for the time they are with us.”

While people are in the process of dying, what they ask is for their pain and symptoms to be at a manageable level, to be free of respiratory distress, and to be clear minded. The hospice staff discuss the goals of care with the patients. A patient with shortness of breath, for example, will be offered options that could include a visit to hospital for a blood transfusion. A patient whose cancer spreads would be offered choices of levels of treatment.

Visits are allowed 24 hours a day. Because when a person is dying, organs are closing down and the heart rate falls, the patient looks ill, but usually he or she will look to family members worse than they actually are. It is the family who suffer emotionally, she said. The dying person usually lies quietly and their death is peaceful. Only a small percentage have intractable pain, and they are treated with sedation.

Peaceful death 

“The labour of death is similar to the labour of birth,” she said. “It is peaceful.

“In 35 years, one only person has asked for an intervention to end their life. That was a person in emotional distress.”

(Her experience is similar to that of Dr. Jose Pereira, a physician and professor of palliative care at the University of Ottawa - see our report on a TVO The Agenda debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide.)

As each patient dies, the death is celebrated. A candle is placed at the front door and another at the door of the patient’s room. A “prayer flag” is planted on the lawn behind the building. A quilt is placed over the casket then folded and given to the family.

Caring actions such as these ease the dying person through the natural process of passing from this world, and can help to turn the anguish of family into a peaceful farewell.

There is a great need for more hospice care. Teri said she knows of hospices that have closed beds or have been unable to open becuiase of lack of funds.

Hospices in Halton:

The Carpenter Hospice, Burlington: http://www.thecarpenterhospice.com/

 Ian Anderson House, Oakville: www.ianandersonhouse.com