by admin | Nov 19, 2019 | Advance Directives, Hospice, Uncategorized
About six months after he lost his 47-year-old wife to cancer, John McDonald received a notice in the mail that Hospice Austin was starting The GIFT Project to educate both the community and the medical profession about the importance of advance directives. The GIFT...
by admin | Nov 18, 2019 | Caregiving, Hospice
I met my friend, Michelle, almost two years ago shortly after she had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Michelle’s childhood was scarred with unreliable, abusive adults and, not surprisingly, the early part of her own adulthood was riddled with addiction and a...
by admin | Aug 20, 2019 | End-of-life care, Hospice, Uncategorized
Not many nonprofits in the Austin area are able to boast about retaining the same executive director for 25 years, but Hospice Austin can! Under Marjorie Mulanax’s leadership, Hospice Austin has grown from serving 300 patients a year to serving nearly 400 patients a...
by admin | Apr 9, 2019 | Being Present, Caregiving, Hospice, Volunteering
I showed up for my afternoon shift at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House where my mother-in-law died more than 15 years ago. The walkway is made of bricks. Many of them contain names and life dates of people who had died at the hospice. Recent rains had caused dirt,...
by admin | Dec 14, 2018 | Caregiving, Hospice, Patients
It’s not unusual for families to go into a tailspin during the agonizing terminal illness of a child. However, Mary Rodriguez and her husband, Ricardo Perez, traversed that difficult journey with incredible courage and grace. They had no indication during Mary’s...
by admin | Aug 9, 2018 | End-of-life care, Hospice, Patients, Uncategorized
In February 2017, 16-year-old Madelyn Shoales was diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer. She underwent surgery to remove the tumor, followed by six weeks of radiation. Two weeks after her surgery, she returned to school to finish out her sophomore year. Madelyn...
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