The CCA invited three experts on palliative care which aims to alleviate symptoms and “improve the quality of life” for patients with chronic diseases.
Hospice care is a form of palliative care given to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live.
Giving care to the person in pain and the people who will be left behind is the key component of palliative and hospice care, according to Jeannette G. Koijane, partnership program coordinator of the National Cancer Institute’s cancer information service for the Pacific region.
Another component, she added, is giving emotional and spiritual support.
She said the person and the family are central to answering questions like, “Am I making the right decisions? Should we be thinking about something else? Have I thought all about my options? Why is this happening? What are we going to do when the person’s gone?”
Koijane said it is important in palliative and hospice care that “we should not wait until the very end of somebody’s life to think about the emotional and spiritual issues that come up.”
She added, “We all need to talk about that today and not wait for a terminal illness diagnosis. We all have to raise the issue as early as possible on why are we here, what is our place in the world and what do I want to do, for instance, with the limited time that I have left. These are the issues that have to be addressed especially when you get the news that your time is shorter than you thought.”
Koijane said getting people talk about these things is one of the strengths of palliative and hospice care.
Leslie Blackhall, medical director and associate professor of the University of Virginia, said the reason people like her and Koijane got involved with palliative care is because they have watched a lot of people die in pain and discomfort.
“I saw that when I was in training,” she said. “People have terrible symptoms at the end of their lives and it just did not seem that that was right.”
She recalled that when she was still in medical school she noticed that both patients and doctors seemed to pretend it was not happening.
Even though none of us like to talk about dying, Blackhall said, “all of us have to do it.”
She said there are many medications used to treat pain, nausea and delirium, but hospice and palliative care acknowledges that dying is a normal part of life and people should not have to suffer so much.
Through hospice and palliative care, she said. “we try to make it better.”
“If people with terminal ailment have these symptoms, we can’t just wish that it will go away. We have to treat them,” she added.
According to Blackhall, hospice and palliative alllow a patient’s family and primary care doctors consider all choices.
Practicing hospice and palliative care, she added, also involves a priest or spiritual person who could provide comfort to patients and their families as they deal with a lot of things.
Ruth Gurusamy administrator of the Health Services of the Pacific Hospice, discussed symptom management during cancer treatment, which aimed to provide families with tools to care for patients undergoing cancer treatment.
Guest speakers Maggie Camacho, a local cancer survivor, and Ruth Sablan a family member of a cancer patient, talked about their personal stories.
