Captain Ron’s VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

February 2010

I remember many years ago when a teacher asked the class, “Which is longer, January or February?”  My hand shot up immediately, and when called upon I answered, “February – it has eight letters.  January only has seven.”  The teacher went on to explain why I was wrong, how January had 31 days and so on.  But I wasn’t wrong.  I gave a valid answer; it simply wasn’t how she expected the question to be answered.  Her world didn’t have much room to look at things in new ways.  Not surprising, I don’t remember the teacher’s name.  I remember the ones whose minds were open to learning while they were teaching, and who  inspired me to look at things from as many different perspectives as possible.

A television commercial voice ended an advertisement for a prescription medication with the words, “Because your health is the most valuable thing you have.”  The statement as thrown out as though fact.  The makers of the product wanted viewers to accept it as unchallenged truth.  That’s not me.  I’m the one who can think of any number of things more valuable than my health.  I work in Hospice where our patients are running out of health.  Does this mean they have nothing of value?  By no means!

Our world seeks to find value in many things when health is declining and life slipping away.  Relationships with family and friends, hope of something yet to come, the joy of remembering life’s best moments are all of tremendous value, even surpassing value when compared to health.  In the end, if health is what we most value, we will be very disappointed.  And if we view health itself in a narrow way, we will be doubly disappointed.

Hospice is part of the Health Care Delivery System and Hospice is beyond it.  Because we provide medical treatment for physical pain and discomfort and because we receive funding from medical insurance (including Medicare and Medicaid) we are often lumped in with other providers, such as Home Care.

But Hospice is so much more.  Hospice blends a broad set of skilled staff at techniques to go way beyond what the merely medical will do.  In fact, Hospice is the one institution in our society that challenges the rest of Medicine to see people as whole, to recognize that we are physical, social, emotional, spiritual, financial, intellectual, cultural beings.

Medicine in our country is geared largely toward providing services approved by the American Medical Association, yet over the years treatments and techniques falling outside the approved methods have successfully lobbied for their right not only to exist but to receive Medicare and private insurance.  Acupuncture, massage, chiropractic and music therapy are licensed, recognized approaches that patients claim bring curative and palliative (comfort) benefits.

As a Hospice director trained and experienced first as a chaplain I continually advocate that Hospice be as open to providing the full range of approaches as possible, while also complying with and respecting the purely medical components involved in bringing physical comfort and management of physical symptoms.  Hospice was born out of the need to make the end-of-life process much larger than the medical world will allow.  Indeed, our greatest challenge continues to be helping individuals, families and physicians understand that enough is enough when it comes to expensive, wasteful, curative measures that actually cause discomfort and hasten death.  This last statement may seem bold but a Duke University study over many years concluded that Hospice prolongs life by helping people enjoy their final days.  The body, mind and soul respond to the cessation of invasive treatment in many cases and people enjoy a period of time with family and friends around, able to come to a sense of closure on life’s journey.

So which is more round, an egg or a the earth?  It depends on where you stand.  Sometimes to see a deeper truth we need to ask others what truth they see from where life has placed them.

Rev. Ron Jetter, Executive Director

Lower Valley Hospice and Palliative Care

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