“You can do everything if you’ve got the palliative care girls helping you.”
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Bereaved carer Val Hooper was talking about being an at-home carer for a terminally ill patient.
Val looked after her friend and housemate, Sandy, who battled with mesothelioma and multiple myeloma over a period of five years.
Seventy-six-year-old Sandy died at their Forster home in 2016.
Val was 82 years at the time, and said the last 12 months of Sandy’s life entailed full time care at home.
“She wanted to go into a hospital but I talked her into staying at home. But I wouldn’t have been able to look after her without the palliative care girls,” Val says.
The last five of those months, Val and Sandy had the help of Palliative Care, Mid North Coast Local Health District.
For three or four days a week, palliative care nurses would come to Val and Sandy’s home to help out not only with the physical care of Sandy, but to check on how Val was coping emotionally as well.
Towards the end, the palliative girls were there every day.
“They not only helped Sandra and made her feel better, and did everything for her, but they helped me.
“They help you want to go on and do things for people.
“I was really strong looking after Sandra, but it was only with those girls’ help. If I hadn’t have had the help of these girls, Sandra would have been in hospital. They looked after at home and she was really comfortable with that. And it made her feel better, too, having the palliative care girls there.”
Robyn McIntosh was one of the palliative care nurses who visited regularly.
“In palliative care we look after the patient and the carer. We see them as both being as important as each other,” Robyn says.
“So we would come and check how Sandra was going as far as how she was feeling in her soul, and how she was managing with symptoms and whether she had any concerns or worries, and then we would check on Val to see how she was coping in her caring role and just support her emotionally as well.”
Given the intimate nature of palliative care, a close and enduring relationship can be built between the nurses and carers.
“The girls are like your best friends. I feel that they were really good friends and I still feel like that. I still see the girls. And it’s like greeting old mates,” Val says.
“The girls are very special, and it takes a special kind of person to do the work they do. I wouldn’t be able to do it, so you look up to what they do. We are lucky in the community that we’ve got these girls, because you talk to people in Sydney and they don’t have half of what we have up here.”