CHAUTAUQUA — When you’re among many people you’ve never met, you can never know just who among them has – much less how many among them have – been touched in one way or another by Hospice.

So it was when the Chautauqua Women’s Club on July 26 hosted Shauna Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Chautauqua Hospice and Palliative Care, or CHPC, for a tent talk.

The tent talk focused on “40 Years of Caring for Chautauqua.”

Meaning Chautauqua County, including Chautauqua Institution.

For tent talks, which the club holds frequently over the course of the nine-week summer season, speakers and their audiences gather under a tent on the front lawn of the women’s club, on South Lake Drive in Chautauqua Institution.

The July 26 audience wasn’t exactly short on people who had been touched by Hospice.

¯ One audience member shared that she was visiting Chautauqua with a friend who is on Hospice in San Diego.

Not everyone on Hospice can travel. Yet the friend is among those who can. She wanted to come to Chautauqua for another summer. So the San Diego Hospice organization and CHPC coordinated care.

Maybe that wouldn’t have occurred to you either, gentle reader.

Yet it works.

How wonderful that it does.

¯ Another audience member shared that she had just lost her centenarian mother, who benefitted from Hospice care.

¯ The wife of an audience member who didn’t speak publicly pursued curative care until shortly before she died. That course was right for her.

However, Hospice – unlike palliative care – is only for people who (1) have a projected life expectancy of six months or less and (2) aren’t pursuing curative care.

After pausing curative care, the wife – a cancer patient – began Hospice with the goal of graduating from Hospice and re-starting curative care when able. She had the benefit of Hospice care for two and a half weeks, and – to the amazement of one Hospice nurse – never needed morphine until the evening she died. That evening was the anniversary of her and her husband’s engagement.

Experiences such as these abound.

Anderson told all audience members that Hospice services include physical occupational, speech, massage, music, art, and acupuncture therapies.

A pet program includes such tasks as dog walking and changing kitty litter.

Anderson added that although advance health-care directives are helpful for those receiving Hospice services, they aren’t necessary.

CHPC anticipates opening a Hospice residence in 2021. Currently under construction, the residence is next to CHPC administrative offices on Fairmount Avenue in Lakewood.

Anderson said the residence will serve about 200 people annually in a comfortable, home-like setting.

This will supplement the care that Hospice will continue to provide elsewhere, including in patients’ homes.

Mary Rappole, who with her husband, Dr. Bert Rappole, has chaired the fundraising effort for the facility, said the Hospice residence will have five patient rooms. Family members will be able to sleep on pull-out beds in the rooms of their patient relatives, or in beds in one of two separate bedrooms in the residence.

Dr. Rappole said virtual tours of the facility are available on the organization’s Web site: https://chpc.care.

According to information from CHPC, the residence will have a kitchen in which families can prepare their own meals. An outdoor space will overlook gardens and a woods. This will provide family members some privacy and quiet time.

Also according to information from CHPC, “The Hospice residence will be accessible to everyone regardless of ability to pay. ‘Room and board will be paid in full by Medicaid or private pay on a sliding scale, or with funds provided for the un- and under-insured through an existing fund at the Northern Chautauqua Community Foundation,'” Anderson said.

Dr. Randy Elf’s spring 2021 column on Hospice is at https://www.post-journal.com/opinion/local-commentaries/2021/04/hospice-workers-are-angels.

COPYRIGHT ç 2021 BY RANDY ELF.