The Squamish Hospice Society is celebrating its 10th year in the community by hosting events from May 1 to 7. Hospice Palliative Care week is a celebration to honour volunteers and the community as well as showcasing all that hospice has to offer. The society promotes compassionate care and support to improve the quality of life for people with life-limiting illness, their loved ones and the bereaved throughout the Sea to Sky Corridor.
Events kick off on Sunday with Hike for Hospice, a popular, family-friendly walk to celebrate lives well lived with help from hospice. Registration begins at noon at Brennan Park auxiliary fields, with an opening ceremony at 12:45 p.m. and the hike starting at 1 p.m.
Hikers will head to Smoke Bluffs trails while walkers venture out to the Community Garden at Mamquam, with everyone returning to Brennan Park for music and catered food. A memory tree in remembrance of family and friends will be onsite, and a silent auction featuring gifts and days out donated by local businesses will be held.
On Monday, the Howe Sound Brew Pub will host a gathering for caregivers, bringing people together to socialize and share experiences.
Next up is an executors’ workshop on Wednesday; Squamish Funeral Chapel is hosting the session about how to execute an estate.
The hospice palliative care week will culminate in an open forum on Saturday, May 7 at the Squamish Adventure Centre. Topics will include advanced care planning, post-op cancer surgery massage and the benefits of an early palliative approach. Jane Webley, regional leader for End Of Life in Vancouver Coastal Health, will be speaking on the “bow tie model” of palliative care.
After 10 years, the Squamish Hospice Society is rebranding as palliative care changes.
“Some people, when asked if hospice could be of help to them, say ‘no thanks,’” says hospice coordinator Nicole Carothers, “We want to change that. We want hospice to be there for a life well lived.”
Squamish hospice offers support to those suffering from life-limiting illnesses, not just for end-of-life care. Hospice is trying to promote the benefits of early palliative care. Reiki and massage are being offered as part of a holistic approach. Registered massage therapist Susan Chapelle of Squamish Integrated Health has worked with palliative care patients through hospice treating post-surgical complications and working with cancer patients.
In the bow-tie approach to palliative care, a recipient does not have to be suffering from an incurable illness or be at end of life. “Palliative care is intended to be applied early in life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses in conjunction with other treatment to provide support in pain and symptom management,” says Pippa Hawley, head of palliative care at UBC.
The care is designed to help the recipient live life well by providing psychological, spiritual and social support, advance care planning, music and art therapy. The bow-tie model for palliative care also includes rehabilitation leading to survivorship.
Squamish Hospice, as it is known, has been serving the community for 10 years, but a hospice has been here since 1988. A small group working out of the Squamish United Church started the service from a Rotary donation.
One of the original hospice volunteers, former Squamish Chief columnist Maureen Gilmour, recalls that at the beginning, the hospice held vigils but later started visiting patients’ homes. “We got very involved. Compassion was what started this.”
Patsy Riecker, a former nurse at Squamish hospital and the original treasurer, says, “Bereavement is a very big part of it. Hospice is not just about the dying.”
“You have to think about the people who are left,” Gilmour adds.
The group members ran the hospice administration from their homes for 15 years so they incurred no overhead costs, then disbanded in 2003 after feeling they couldn’t develop further. In 2006, a few care professionals raised the lack of palliative resources with Vancouver Coastal Health. Nurses began working as volunteers to create a workable bridge between health-care professionals and hospice.
The continuum of care moved forward in 2006, when Squamish bereavement groups merged with Squamish hospice. Liz Wood, a social worker with Sea to Sky Community Services, who leads groups for hospice, says, “Friends begin at groups.” She believes that this is a happy marriage with hospice and that “service delivery is getting better, but evolution never stops.”
Editor’s note: Lisa Cotton is a volunteer for the Squamish Hospice Society. To register for the hike visit www.squamishhospice.com.
