06-22-2022 Primetime Livnig - Flipbook - Page 18
18 A Special Advertising Section of Baltimore Sun Media Group | Wednesday, June 22, 2022
CONTINUING CARE
Your quality of life
Hospice and palliative care
By Margit B. Weisgal, Contributing Writer
I
n her 80s, Fredricka Whistler developed myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a blood or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
comes down to the quality of life.
disorder with multiple variations that is considered to be a form of cancer. In her case,
Palliative Care
“Palliative care focuses on those who
are living with a debilitating, life-limiting,
serious illness to increase the quality of
life and relieve symptoms while assisting
them holistically,” says Tracie SchwoyerMorgan, D.N.P., ANP-BC, lead nurse practitioner and manager of integrative and
palliative medicine for Gilchrist and GBMC.
“We take care of the whole person, providing support wherever the patient lives:
nursing home, hospital, outpatient office
or in their own residence. We look at the
individual’s goals, educate them on their
illness so they can make informed decisions, and figure out what we can do to
help.
“What’s changed and improved over
the last few years,” she explains, “is the
addition of non-pharmaceutical therapies
to patients’ treatments. We added a mindbody specialist approximately two years
ago, to complement the services being
provided to both inpatients and outpatients. The therapies are not invasive or
harmful, and some work better than oth-
she was constantly anemic, always tired and weak, which required regular iron infu-
sions. The hospital where she was treated brought in the palliative care team for support.
Each time she went for a treatment, she was warmly welcomed. All the staff members
knew her and cheered her on. She valued those relationships.
The quality of life is
more important
than life itself.
– Alexis Carrel,
Nobel Prize in Medicine
When she celebrated her 90th birthday, and with her family’s agreement,
she decided she had had enough and
stopped the treatments. Her doctor wrote
a prescription for hospice care, knowing
that without treatment she was coming to
the end of her life. The hospice team – at
first a nurse practitioner, a social worker
and a counselor – met with her and set
some goals, the most important of which
was she wanted to die at home. No hospitals. No extraordinary measures. She
got her wish. She died peacefully after
several months.
There may come a time when you
require specialized care. It may be when
you have a serious illness such as cancer
or heart failure, debilitating chronic conditions like dementia, Parkinson’s disease
It is a time when you make choices based
on your quality of life: palliative care or
hospice. Whatever the prognosis, there
are more options available than you might
expect.
Both types of care are built around the
patient and his or her needs and wants and
those same benefits extend to the family.
• With palliative care, a person may
choose to continue curative treatments, benefiting from extended support from the palliative care team.
• With hospice, a person decides to
discontinue any curative treatments
or recognizes the disease is no longer
responding, benefiting from extended
support from the hospice care team.
In both cases, health care providers
add additional support. Hospice is always
palliative, but palliative care does not
always denote a hospice arrangement.
“Palliative care is meant to enhance a
person’s current care by focusing on quality of life for them and their family,” says
the National Institute on Aging, part of the
National Institutes of Health. “Hospice care
focuses on the care, comfort and quality of
life of a person with a serious illness who
is approaching the end of life.” It always
Quality of life, continued on page 30