VNA OLDEST HOME HEALTH AGENCY

The Visiting Nurse Association of Southeast Missouri, oldest non-profit home care agency in the area, wants terminally ill patients to choose hospice care.

"The hospice concept is very old," said Helen Sander, a VNA community liaison. "It is returning to home to live our last days. To have a peaceful and comfortable place, to die, surrounded by our own memories."

Sander said many people prefer to die at home where there families, including young children and pets, may come and go.

The VNA began home care more than 24 years ago and was the area's first non-profit home care agency to be certified for hospice care.

Sander said people medically certified to have six months or less to live are given the option of hospice care.

Costs for hospice care are generally covered by Medicare and Medicaid or patient health insurance, but Sander said those who cannot pay are not turned away.

"Donations for those patients who can't pay, if they qualify for hospice care, are available," she said. VNA volunteers raise money throughout the year to help with these costs.

Pam Turner, a VNA hospice nurse, said hospice care gives families of the terminally ill an opportunity to draw closer together.

"It is a labor of love," she said. "Families and the care giver can draw closer together and show how much they are all loved."

Turner thinks people have a right to die where they want.

She said the time before death is a very special time.

"There is a very special feeling of love and concern," Turner said. "I remember a patient who wanted to die in her own bed. She and her daughter talked about trips they had taken together and things they had done in the daughter's childhood. The daughter would sing at her mother's bedside."

A team of hospice care workers includes a medical director, a social worker, a registered nurse, volunteers and a chaplain.

Turner gets close to her patients and must find closure after their death. "It can be a very special time for me," she said. "I always attend a visitation or a funeral as a closure to the case."

Patients and their families also find closure. Sander said the time in hospice care gives them a chance to prepare for death.