Hospice Austin’s Blog
Overcoming Barriers to Care
When it comes to her medical care, Jazmin Campbell, 21, has a long history of not being believed. She was given a variety of diagnoses as different symptoms cropped up, but no one could get a handle on what was wrong. Because her symptoms fluctuate, she encountered skepticism over the years from clinicians. It didn’t help that she was young, female, and a person of color.
“I look normal, but I wasn’t normal,” Jazmin said. “They thought I was faking and could do more than I could. Sometimes I could walk and sometimes I couldn’t – it’s done that all my life.”
A Tribute to Our Volunteers
Hospice Austin volunteers bring companionship to our patients and their loved ones. They visit and read with patients, write letters, listen to music, play cards or games, take walks, assist the patient and family with projects, and give the caregiver time to get away for short periods. They make a profound difference in a family’s life as a compassionate and calm presence who understand what they’re going through. Our volunteers are a treasured part of the Hospice Austin team. In honor of National Volunteer Month, we asked our volunteers recently why they do this kind of work. Here are their responses.
Thank you, St. David’s Foundation!
St. David’s Foundation, one of the largest health foundations in the country, approved $75.9 million in grant investments back into the Central Texas community in 2023. These grants reflect the Foundation’s commitment to advancing health equity in Central Texas through investment and action. St. David’s Foundation awarded $827,149 to Hospice Austin, which includes $538,691 in support of our Hospice Access for All Program for patients with little or no insurance, $280,020 for the GIFT Project (Giving Instructions for Tomorrow) an initiative to educate the community about advance care planning, and $8,438 to support funding for a feasibility study for Hospice Austin’s Christopher House.
A Look at 2023
As we look to the year ahead, I want to thank you all for your support in the year just past. In 2023, Hospice Austin cared for over 2,000 of your neighbors in Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties, which resulted in 123,000 days of care. Your support enabled us to provide more than $1.8 million in uncompensated care to patients with little or no insurance.
His Legacy Lives On
Austin Fire Dept. Battalion Chief Travis Maher spent his life serving others – 23 years with the Austin Fire Department, 25 years with the Wimberley Fire Rescue, 21 years as a member of Texas A&M Task Force 1, and task force leader of the TX-TF1 Water Rescue Team. To many, he was considered “the face of disaster response.” After being diagnosed with a terminal disease from exposure to toxic materials while responding to 9/11’s Ground Zero, he spent his last weeks under Hospice Austin’s care. He called our staff heroes.
He was the hero.
The Power of Gratitude in Grief
After losing my husband to cancer, I didn’t find much to feel grateful about. He had died way too early – we were supposed to grow old together. With catastrophic loss, of course, comes catastrophic grief. I felt cleaved in two, invisibly hemorrhaging pain, fear, anger, the future we’d planned. I was suddenly a single mother of an eighth grader. I was having to navigate my own grief as well as trying to shepherd my daughter through hers.
Volunteering at the end of days
Having re-retired after teaching English for a year at a local high school, I am trying to fill my time with activities that keep me busy, healthy, and productive. One of those things is a return to volunteering at a hospice, working with the sick, the dying, and their loved ones.
I had spent a couple of years volunteering to go to people’s houses, but it was frustrating to show up and be told that I wouldn’t be needed that day. So I signed up to work at Hospice Austin’s Christopher House, where there is always somebody there. As it happened, my first mother-in-law’s life ended there in 1999, and it was a dignified and relatively comfortable passing. She is memorialized on a brick in the courtyard. I often look at her name as I enter the building.
COVID and my return to teaching kept me away for a few years, but the volunteer coordinator was still there. So was my name tag.
A Tribute to Jack Harrison and Mark Roeder
Hospice Austin recently lost two beloved employees, Maintenance Coordinator Mark Roeder, and Certified Nurse Assistant Jack Harrison. They both died unexpectedly, leaving the rest of us – usually so accustomed to death – feeling unmoored. Mark was with us a little...
A Better Death: St. David’s Foundation examines Texans’ views and experiences
St. David’s Foundation commissioned a statewide survey to better understand Texans’ experiences, end-of-life priorities, and barriers around end-of-life care. The study found that most Texans share end-of-life preferences, such as wanting to die at home and avoiding the financial burden of care. However, most Texans, including older adults and those with a serious illness, are unprepared for decisions around end-of life care. Just one-third said their loved one’s end-of-life went the way they wanted it to go and Black and Latino respondents report more challenges related to end-of life care. Loved ones whose deaths went the way they wanted were twice as likely to have died at home and twice as likely to have been receiving hospice care.
Reflections on Camp Brave Heart
This summer was my 26th time attending Camp Braveheart. Over the years I’ve played many roles: director, small group facilitator, floater, trouble shooter, home-sickness whisperer. Every year there is a moment at camp that pulls my heart so wide open I can barely breathe. Often this comes during the closing ceremony when all the handmade memory boxes are lined up side by side, one after the other, with words like mom, dad, grandma, nana, papa, baby brother, big sister hand painted or spelled out with magazine letters across the top. Words that contain worlds. As the campers pass by their box, they place a small battery-operated candle on top or inside their memory box; a small gesture filled with such longing and love. My hope for this procession of grieving children is that they will be able to navigate the disorienting journey through the valley of loss and safely find their way to the other side where they may encounter a new kind of wholeness that includes what is broken; where they may discover a wiser, more mature sense of what it means to be human in this beautiful, fragile world we live in.
