Home care workers offer comfort to cancer victims
When a person is diagnosed with cancer, area experts said the initial reaction of shock and disbelief can often be overwhelming at a time when the patient needs as much strength and courage they can muster. Enter the homecare team.
When patients are too sick to care for themselves, need at-home treatment or hospice care, hundreds of area patients’ turn to Fayette Home Care and other services similar to the traveling team of nurses.
Diane Crossan, director of Fayette Home Care, said the program is sometimes a hospice service and other times a counseling service, but is one that the patients begin to take comfort in during their fight with the disease.
Crossan, who has worked for Fayette Home Care for 15 years, said the most prevalent ailments suffered by home care patients are heart related, but added that cancer is a close second.
“We see younger patients now, especially with cancer,” Crossan said. “At one time our average cancer patients were probably over 60 but now there are many more in their 40s, partly because we are identifying earlier. We are better educated and that is helping to drive down death rates. And with advancements we are catching it earlier.”
And while the staff of the homecare service are happy about the first drop in cancer fatalities in more than 70 years, they said they are still ready to be there when the region needs someone to lean on.
Lou Ann Patterson, nurse manager for Fayette Home Care, said the home care service also provides social workers to help ease the pain and anguish brought on by the disease as well as physical therapy if the patients become weak.
Patterson, who has worked for Fayette home care for a dozen years after beginning her nursing career at the Uniontown Hospital, said it is the repartee between patient and doctor or nurse that helps many of the patients overcome the life-threatening disease.
“We work as a team, from the home care to the doctors to the hospital to the oncologists and radiologists. There is a continuity of care,” Patterson said.
Wendy Hamilton, who started working as a nurse in 1986, said she spends her days traveling the county for the homecare service, hooking up patients for at-home chemo, flushing and cleaning wounds and ports, checking vitals and blood pressure and providing an emotional outlet for patients.
“We do a lot of teaching, especially for younger patients,” Hamilton said. “Things on how to prevent side effects. We teach them about their meds and proper nutrition. Like some cancer patients on chemo can’t stand the smell of food, like cooking meat. So we suggest cold meats. It’s little things like that.”
The Uniontown resident said it can be especially tough with pediatric patients.
“It can be hard because when we get them they are usually so ill. It is emotional and we get involved personally because we have to earn their trust. They really listen and come to a point where they trust your opinion and want your opinion. You become like a part of their family.”
But the mother of three said she tries not to take the hardship home with her and gets lost in her kids activities to ease her mind.
Hamilton said there are primarily two types of treatment for cancer, chemotherapy and radiation, but noted that some offshoots exist like the “gamma knife” that incorporates surgery and radiation together.
She said a typical radiation treatment for cancer would be something like 10 minutes of radiation five days a week for six weeks and noted that doctors tabulate a max dosage for a patient before the side effects of the radiation outweigh the reward.
Hamilton said chemotherapy, the most diagnosed treatment for cancer, is simply an intravenous feed of several medications into the bloodstream to fight the cancer cells. But as with all medicines, the chemo also has some side effects.
Hamilton said regardless of the type of cancer or treatment, many cancer sufferers experience nausea and nerve related problems, including extreme sensitivities to cold.
“All of the sudden they can’t drink a cold pop, even if they are craving one, because it feels like they are swallowing nails,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton said others described a metallic taste regardless of the food they ate, so she said she simply helped the patients with trial and error tests to alleviate the side effect.
“In a physical sense, I go to homes and assess patients and provide the care they need. But I am really there to also be a person to listen. The patients are so appreciative. I find it very rewarding,” Hamilton said.
Patterson said another issue that is sometimes misunderstood is hair loss, noting that a patient’s self-mage is a key to continuing to maintain a positive attitude.
“The patient needs to make a life change. They decide if they are going to beat it. A lot of it is mind over matter, like ‘I’m not going to let this beat me.'”
Crossan, who also began her career as a nurse, said lung cancer is the most frequent cancer of patients served by home care, and she attributes the high rates to smoking in more recent years and smoking and the coalmines in earlier decades.
Hamilton and Crossan know the effects of the disease all too well.
The women have been through the battle alongside their mothers, both of whom in recent years were diagnosed with lymphoma.
“Having a strong will and desire is half the battle and probably the bigger half,” Crossan said.
“You never want to give that hope up,” Hamilton said. “It is a shock to the system at the initial diagnosis. I mean, some patients can’t ever say the word, cancer. Maybe it is “the tumor.” Then it is “the tumor.” They work through it on their own.”
Crossan said her mother has been cancer free for seven years, but noted that sometimes, being around the illness so often she finds herself “waiting for the other shoe to fall.”
“But with my mom it was different because I couldn’t be my professional self. I had to be me – a daughter. I had to be there emotionally and I was crying, just like everybody else,” Crossan said.
“Sometimes that is hard for us,” Patterson said.
Hamilton agreed and noted that regardless of the understanding of the illness and the resolve necessary to defeat it, the fear is still there.
“Sometimes we have patients that get treatment and they don’t get better and then all we can do is help them be as comfortable as possible,” Hamilton said. “And then I think what if this happens with my mom. In the long run the job is very rewarding to help families have what is hopefully a peaceful death, but it is overwhelming for us. But you also know that you have done a good job and that you made a special place in their hearts and made a difference.”