7:06 a.m. - 2013-04-01
HOSPICE
Kyra has started volunteering once a week for hospice. She doesn't actually work in a hospice facility, but spends two hours every Friday with an elderly lady in the woman's own apartment. This gives the patient's daughter, her principal caregiver, two hours to take some time off, run errands, or go to appointments for herself.

The older lady is still alert and surprisingly active, even though she is approaching her 100th birthday.

"A hundred years old!" I said. "What's her name?"

"Mrs HIPAA," Kyra answered, deadpan.

Kyra had to undergo twelve hours of training before she could be a hospice volunteer. Here's one of the stories she heard during that time:

Someone came up with the idea of photography as therapy for the hospice patients and employees. (I imagine nurses and others who work with terminally ill patients are subject to burnout.) Everyone in the facility was given a disposable camera and told to take pictures of whatever they wanted to. At the end of the day the person running the program collected the cameras and looked at the photos.

One picture kept showing up again and again: A wall with a clock, a sharps disposal, and a fire extinguisher. On closer inspection it could be seen that there were subtle differences in the many photos, though all showed the same three things. Walking around the facility, the director realized that all the pictures had been taken from patient's beds by the patients themselves. All of them spent much of their day staring at a wall with a clock, a sharps disposal and a fire extinguisher.

A meeting of the hospice board was coming up, so the director had the photos made into a slide presentation. With some trepidation--boards tend to prefer good news--she gave her presentation. Afterward the room was silent for a long time.

Then one of the board members spoke up: "That was horrible."

I'm done for, thought the director.

"We have to do something about this," continued the board member.

Currently the hospice has a new photography as therapy program: The patients are being give photography classes and encouraged to take as many pictures as they can from places other than their beds. Family members are being given cameras as well. The walls in the patient rooms will be rearranged to accommodate several framed photographs of the patient's choice.

Not a big step, but for a hospice patient it has to be a significant improvement, looking at something besides impersonal objects that only remind you of your own mortality.

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