Susan’s story
Few services are so misunderstood as those provided by hospices. Here Susan Oliver, who has first hand experience of Severn Hospice both as a visitor and a patient, sets the record straight.
I’ve been coming to the Hospice since 2000. I got referred after having breast cancer and becoming very ill. I was referred to Jan Vail, then a Hospice outreach nurse. I had always wanted red hair, so I dyed it as soon as it started to grow back and thought ‘Pick up your bags and carry on!’
‘Hospice’ is a very frightening word for some people. One friend said ‘Oh you don’t want to go in there’. In her mind the Hospice was somewhere cold and clinical. She had an old fashioned view and thought it was like an institution, somewhere that you are abandoned and left alone. It is just nothing like that.
I’d been to the Hospice previously visiting a relative who I had been looking after, and a sister who passed away at home had been there, so I had a different outlook. But when they said ‘We’re taking you to the Hospice’, like everyone I thought ‘This is more serious than they’re saying’.
Open your mind to it. Don’t see coming here as an ending, it’s a beginning. You find out all the different ways of help, care and support that are available. When you come in it can be scary, but once you arrive you wish you’d come in weeks ago. It’s completely different from the clinical world of hospitals, a different way of nursing. You’ve got to look at it as an opening, not a closing. There are so many people here to help. Realise more than anything the care and support for you and your family. There is always somebody who can help you out.
I’ve been coming to the Day Hospice for so long that I have made and lost a few dear friends. Coming to the Hospice is a short experience for some people, but every single one I have met along the way has been more comforted and supported because they have been here.
People always think it is the last port, and in some cases it is, but there are so many other aspects to the Hospice. There is so much care and support and friendship building. People feel they can talk to each other because for one reason or another they’re all in the same boat. They quickly come to realise that there is more to the Hospice than they thought.
The complementary therapy is wonderful, I go in and after two minutes I’m in a different world. In Shrewsbury they are available most of the time and it’s the most relaxing thing, I just can’t say. For me, I never would have believed I could just sit there, I was a busy, busy woman. But from the very first session I was taken by it. People have to try these things to know how helpful they are. When I’ve had a reflexology treatment I get so relaxed I can sleep. It’s the only time I really relax. I wake up here, I look at the trees and the lawn and I feel safe.
There are social workers, all different sorts of care workers. There is more care, more back up, more support than anyone realises. The nursing is 100% excellent, I can’t speak too highly of it. Being part of the family here is just the way it is. It’s the comfort and support not just when you’re in the Hospice but when you’re at home, too. I could go on forever, it’s just much more all-embracing than people see. Originally I thought going to the Hospice was the end for me, but it has brought me through some rough patches that I would not have got through otherwise. It’s love, care, any way you can be helped. You can never put enough back in for what they give you.
