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San Diego Hospice

"Before I ever signed up for Hospice, I talked to several interns about their experience there. They all said three things. It is difficult, it is rewarding and it will forever change you. They were right.

As I put my experience into words, it is difficult. There are no words eloquent or descriptive enough to fully explain the dimensions of my work at Hospice. It has changed me on both a professional and personal levels.

Professionally, I was given the opportunity to really see what acupuncture alone is capable of. I had always been of the mind set that no treatment was complete without prescribing herbs. That idea has been banished. I have seen the simple profoundness of a three or four needle treatment and the power of auricular points used alone. I have been challenged to think differently about Chinese Medicine. At hospice we are not always able to treat as we do in the clinic. Our treatment tables are their beds, and the patient's position is never changed. Their clothes may not even be acu-friendly. So, the challenge becomes to fit the medicine to the patient and not the patient to the medicine. We are fortunate to have a system of medicine that is so multi-fasceted and rich that it moves in a circular fashion to allow us to meet these needs.

When I first began, I knew in my heart that these people had come to die, but my mind and ego wanted to cure. I took time to be comfortable that my purpose was of a palliative nature and not a curative one.

At times it was difficult to walk into rooms where there was such profound suffering. The challenge was not to change the suffering, but to be present with both patients and families as they talked, relived memories past and even as they cried.

There was one case in particular that touched me on levels unexplainable. A 16-year-old boy had come to die. His life paralleled closely that of my own son. I ached as his mother sat day after day caring for her young man now child again. I thought of my son. I could only imagine the depths and dimensions of this mother's suffering and the dreams once dreamed that she now had lost forever. I grieved with her. I cried that day and tears still come as I remember him. My heart's capacity for compassion and care had grown. All of this is a part of life and a part of the experience here at Hospice.

Healing here does not mean that patients are cured or even that they can go home. Healing comes in a flickering second when the hearts clarity enables the patient to say one last "I Love You", or even Goodbye". If this is the pearl that comes perhaps only once from working at Hospice, then it is a work worth doing."

Lornae Hinson - Intern