Published: June 29, 2007 05:30 pm      

COMMUNITIES: Niagara Hospice’s new era led by CEO's passion to improve end-of-life care

Some people have compared the hospice experience to the practice of midwifery.

In the same way that a midwife is devoted to easing one’s natural passage into this world, hospice workers help to ease one’s passage out, with the same kind of comfort and support.

And even though hospice may be a logical of response to end-of-life issues, some people simply don’t want to think about dying. Considering, however, the growing support of hospices in this country, many people are thinking about it, and supporting a trend towards a gentler completion of the circle of life.

When Hospice House opened in Lockport last month, it was community and staff support that brought life to a facility which is at the cutting edge of end-of-life medicine. Their efforts were led by a man who knows personally that hospice can change lives, its chief executive officer, John Lomeo.

When Lomeo was a young nursing home administrator, “It was almost taboo to talk about hospice.”

Even though hospice services were available, most people didn’t know enough about hospice to choose it over traditional care, he said.

When his own parents fell ill within a short time of one another, he dealt with a medical community that brought all its weaponry to bear in the double fight against his parents’ cancers. Both his parents endured surgeries and treatments which he later came to believe were unnecessary and which he said greatly diminished the quality of their last days.

“It was miserable. The doctors would not let go,” he said.

Had he known then what he knows now — about how hospice can change many things about the end of a loved one’s life — “I would have definitely made the call to hospice.”

Life experiences often weave their way into one’s destiny, and in Lomeo’s case, his parents’ difficult deaths spurred some of the massive creative force of change that has helped him to evolve the face of hospice services in the Niagara region.

From the ethereal giant stones that stand sentinel in its driveway to the personal touches within, Niagara Hospice House was designed to offer beauty and comfort to families facing the challenges of terminal illness. Rooms are decorated to create a sense of home. Medical equipment is hidden behind paintings. There is even a spa with a fireplace. The house also offers a beautiful family room and kitchen, a spa for patients, a game room and a quiet chapel, all inside a building surrounded by a quiet, country setting.

The staff builds in time to sit with patients and their families, to listen to concerns and find ways to make the death as gentle, pain-free and love-filled as possible, Lomeo said. Supporting the medical staff is a contingent of counselors and bereavement specialists, and an army of volunteers whose only job is to serve the patients and their families.

The care is driven by the passion of the providers, and one of the reasons Lomeo took the job to lead Niagara Hospice was that the passion was palpable.

He described how he felt when he first met with hospice leaders and staff, prior to taking the job as CEO: “I thought it was a tremendous opportunity to take a young organization and bring it to the next level, to take a good organization and make it great.”

And because they deal with death each day, the experience for staff and administrators takes on a certain kind of grace and gratitude.

He noted that his workers leave the building “content and happy, knowing they’ve made a difference.”

No one forgets how important their work is, especially the director himself. “It blows my mind when I sit down with a patient and they say ‘I’m ready to die, help me to die, I don’t want to be a burden on my family, I don’t want to die in pain, I want to die with dignity, and if at all possible, I want to die at home. Help me,’ ” he said. “How powerful is that?”

“We never forget. We never lose sight of the individual and the family and we live by two codes. We have one chance to do it right, and we want to provide right care in the right place at the right time,” he said. “We have to be stellar the first time.”

Editor Michele DeLuca volunteers in the Niagara Hospice Super Teen program, helping teenagers create “legacy videos” with hospice patients. Contact DeLuca at 693-1000, ext. 157.