Hospice nurses have shared stories of some of their most memorable patients. Photo / 123RF
A patient who would only meet in a pub, a wife who knew her husband was going to die at 3pm exactly and a man who chose to live out his dying days in his caravan awning.
These are some of the most memorable patients of past and present nurses from Auckland’s Harbour Hospice, which is celebrating 40 years of caring for its community.
Tricia Clarkson was the hospice’s very first nurse, starting with the charity in 1987 and remaining on staff until 2010.
If there’s one patient I’ll always remember with special fondness, it’s Ron.
Ron was in his late 80s, a bushman who valued his independence. He wouldn’t let Hospice visit him at home because he didn’t want the neighbours to know he was sick. But he did agree to me visiting him at the pub, so I would meet with him every Tuesday at the Devonport Tavern.
My very first visit was on a Friday, and I remember standing at the doorway thinking, ‘What am I doing?’ I hadn’t been in a bar since before I was married. The bar was thick with smoke and there were two TVs showing a boxing match; people were roaring. I asked the barmaid where I could find Ron and she pointed to a man by the jukebox. Ron was such a regular he had his own plaque on the wall and his own chair beneath it.
Our first conversation was very difficult because there was so much noise and he was more interested in the boxing match. We agreed that next time we would meet on a Tuesday when it was quieter.
Over a five-week period, Ron became more and more frail, so I got him to come to Hospice Daycare once a week, where he could have a decent meal and meet other patients. One day I had a call from the barmaid asking me to come because Ron did not seem well.
I arrived to find Ron looking dreadful. I took him home and we called his GP, who recommended he go into a Hospice inpatient unit. At that stage we didn’t have one, so we rang St Joseph’s Hospice.
At St Joseph’s, Ron sat on the bed and pulled out his mouth organ. He had always promised to play it for me, but when he put the instrument to his lips, no sound came. We both cried.
Ron died a couple of days later. All the bar regulars were at his funeral, and that was just the most amazing tribute to a wonderful Devonport character.
My Hospice role was honestly the best I ever had. It was tough at times, but knowing I made a difference has given me immense satisfaction.
Marguerite Sakey practised as a Hospice nurse for more than 30 years.
Orla and Brian were devout Irish Catholics. They shared a very strong faith and had crosses all over their house. I had been calling in regularly to help Orla care for Brian, who had cancer. On this particular day, I was on a rostered day off, but Orla found my number and called me and said, “You’d better come quickly, it’s time.”
I said, “Orla, I’m off duty. But tell me, what is Brian doing?” She said, “He’s sitting at the table eating his porridge.”
I said, “Well, Orla, I can probably reassure you that Brian’s not dying today.”
She said, “He is. He’ll be going at three o’clock today. I’ve prayed to the Holy Spirit. I’ve prayed to the Novena of the Precious Blood that he will have a holy death and I will be told. And she told me Brian’s going today at three o’clock.”
Orla had called their only son and told him to be there to say goodbye to his father.
I stopped by to reassure them and saw that Brian was fine, so I went on my merry way.
The next morning I got to work… only to learn that Brian had passed away at exactly three o’clock the previous afternoon, just as Orla had said he would.
To my absolute surprise, she had been right and I had been wrong.
I’ll never forget Orla. She’s affected me hugely over the years in regard to her practise and her total belief in the hereafter. The reality for me was that her belief was so strong that it came to fruition.
And I don’t think it would have mattered what religion she followed – whether it was Hindu or Buddhism or whatever – it was the depth of her belief system that defied all logic and made what she saw, true.
Marguerite Sakey.
I went to see a woman who had been estranged from her daughter for 20 years. Her daughter seemed to have somehow sensed that her mother’s time was close and had come home. When I arrived at the house she was standing outside her mother’s room, and her mother was lying in her bed. She looked like she’d already died.
I said to her, “Would you like to go in?” She said, “I’m not going in there.” So I went in and her mother opened her eyes. She wasn’t dead after all. I leaned in close so I could hear what the mother said, and she told me, “I know why you’ve come. Send her in.”
So her daughter went in and her mother asked her to bring her her will, which was in a wooden box sitting on the dresser. Then she asked her daughter to sit beside her and put her arms around her. And she asked me to fetch a green knitted shawl that had been draped over a chair and wrap it around the both of them. I did as she’d asked and that’s how they sat together, wrapped in the shawl until the woman died in her daughter’s arms.
It was the most beautiful end-of-life estrangement-come-right-again moment that I’ve ever witnessed in my life.
Judy Macready was Totara Hospice’s first nurse, employed in 1984. In 2018 she was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to Hospice.
It was Christmas Eve and I was on call. The phone beside our bed rang at 1.30am. It was the husband of a patient who was in distress, so I drove via Hospice to pick up some medication then on to their home. I noticed there was a caravan parked beside the house, and found out later that there were family staying but her husband hadn’t wanted to wake them and ruin their Christmas.
When I knocked on the back door this dear man, her husband, opened it and said, “You’ll never guess what’s happened. She’s gone to sleep now that she knows you’re coming. I’ll make you a cup of tea.” He had put out the proper bone china teacups and plates and little bits to eat, and it was all laid out on a tray cloth on the table. So there we were, taking tea together at two o’clock on Christmas morning with the rest of the world fast asleep.
After we’d had our tea and cake, I went through and woke her up and gave her the medication, just to make sure she would be okay. I left at about three o’clock. Driving home, the sky was starting to lighten.
I went back to bed but was too afraid to go to sleep because everyone was coming to my place for Christmas dinner and I had to put the turkey in the oven.
Judy Macready.
The very first referral we got was to go and sit with a woman to allow her husband to go to bowls. I allocated a volunteer and she went, and she called in to see me afterwards and said, “Well, that was a waste of time.”
When I asked why, she said that when she’d got there, she’d found that the patient had gone to the trouble of baking for her, had set everything out for afternoon tea and entertained her for the afternoon.
I said, “Oh well, that’s her home. She’s allowed to do what she wants to do.”
This went on for a few weeks until one day the volunteer turned up in my office again and said, “I’ve just been to Rose again and I had to make the tea.”
It was all about learning what people wanted. I used to say that I had to “listen naively” to find out what people needed. Rose needed to be in charge of her own house for as long as she could be.
Amelia de Sousa, clinical nurse specialist.
I was in a beautiful family home with a beautiful loving family; everything felt very calm and tranquil. The wife of the patient was there, as well as their children, who were gorgeous and caring. One of the family members was a health professional who was accustomed to doing everything you could to “save” a person.
Their dad had entered his last days of life, and on this day, end of life was very close. We were turning him and making sure he was comfortable when he suddenly stopped breathing. The family member who was a health professional looked at me and blurted out, “I’ve got an intubation tube and bag in the car, shall I go and get it?”
One of her siblings said, “Now’s not the time”, and as I cleared my throat to speak, everyone just burst into laughter.
It’s these moments you wouldn’t think are funny that can have everybody collapsing in stitches. That inappropriateness, that black humour. It can completely defuse a situation.
Their father did start spontaneously breathing again, but died a few hours later with his loving family around him.
Helen Franich, registered nurse.
I once had a patient with a neurological illness who was a very free spirit. He and his partner had lived in a caravan for years, so when he came under Hospice care they continued to live in this caravan park by the ocean. There was even a move to another caravan park while he was under Hospice care. I always enjoyed my visits with this couple because you never knew quite what to expect, or how they’d adapted something in the caravan to make his life easier. They were very innovative.
When he became immobile we hired him a special hospital bed, but we couldn’t fit it in the caravan. So the bed went in the zipped-up awning part in front, and that’s where he stayed. He was perfectly happy there.
His final days were spent at our inpatient unit because his symptoms had become too difficult to manage at home. But we had helped to keep him in the place he called home for as long as we could, and that had meant a lot to him and his partner.
Jan Nichols, chief executive of Harbour Hospice and a former nurse in oncology, haematology and intensive care.
I was looking after a mum in hospital who had young children and a baby, and the reason her situation resonated with me was that I was a similar age, with similar-aged children. When she realised she was not going to get well, all she wanted to do was go home to be with her children and be a mother. She wanted to finish knitting cardigans for each of them, drive her car again and finish the family photo albums.
The most important things in life aren’t the things you’d imagine. They’re not going on a world trip or jumping out of a plane or visiting Disneyland. They’re very simple things and they’re things that people hope will leave their memories imprinted on those who matter to them. What people fear most is that they’ll be forgotten, they’ll simply disappear. Or that the people they leave behind will suffer through their absence. And that’s why it’s so important to talk about what might happen if they don’t get better, to be brave enough to have those conversations. If you don’t, the opportunity is lost.
For that mother, what mattered most was that she finished knitting those cardigans and spent time with her children, so we got her out of hospital as fast as we could and helped set up some support services around her. I only wish we’d been able to offer her the services available through Hospice now.
I heard that she lived a few more weeks. I don’t know whether she finished the cardigans and photo albums, but I’d like to think she did, and that her children continue to cherish them.
Cat Chiu, nursing development and clinical nurse specialist.
I had a patient who had cancer. After a few visits, I noticed that she had a lot of medication in the house, but none of it had been taken. I asked her about this and she told me she couldn’t read. So, she had got all of this medication from different pharmacies and doctors, yet didn’t know how to use it or what it was for.
I went to a stationery shop and bought her some colourful stickers, then I labelled everything for her and explained to her what each colour meant. It worked for her because it was simple, and I had built that relationship with her so she trusted me.
I often share this story with teams because it worried me that other health professionals might have assumed that this patient was what some people call “non-compliant”. You can never make assumptions about a patient, and it’s important to be creative so that you can find a way to help a person on their terms, and in ways that suit them.
Lupe Williams, registered nurse.
One of the moments that really touched me was seeing the way a patient’s children responded to their mother dying.
The patient was young – only in her 50s, and she had cancer. Her children were in their late teens, and even though they lived at home with their mother and father, she had wanted to protect them. So whenever I visited, the children were never there. Their parents had kept them away from those conversations.
On this particular evening, her husband called me, very concerned. I went around and could see she was dying; I asked him to call their children. One was in town and one was at a prayer group. They rushed home, and I remember feeling very nervous because I wasn’t sure how they were going to react.
But the level of maturity they showed, the way they were there for their mum and dad – that was very, very touching.
I told them their mother was dying but they knew, and they just rose to the occasion.
Her daughter took her mother’s hand and gently held it as she prayed for her for over an hour. They tended to their father and they made sure their mother was comfortable. She died very peacefully with those she loved most beside her.
These stories were pulled together by Harbour Hospice’s communications and social media specialist, Karyn Henger. Names of patients and some details have been changed to protect the privacy of patients and their families.
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