As the blossom falls from the trees and the fruit starts to set, we turn our minds to thinking of the new seasons of the year.

For those of our patients and their families coming to terms with this will be the last spring with their loved one, we at Hospice start to talk with them about the things needed and the care and love desired.

We look at the four Cs of palliative care.

The first for all involved is communication. It can be hard to start to speak of life going forward for some and closing for others. Grief is natural, allow it to flow and through this comes understanding and acceptance.

We had one wee boy – about 10, as curious as any wee boy – ask our doctor how did he know that his Granda was going to die, – Tom was at home, the lounge filled with a hospice bed, medications stored on the bookshelf amongst all the dusty photos.

Tom and our doctor had been speaking about the garden and how Tom was thinking of all the things that still needed to be done – copper sprayed before bud burst on the peaches to stop curly leaf, the chitted potatoes that needed to be planted to have new spuds for Christmas.

Both doctor and patient were interested in the garden and the jobs of an ardent gardener.

Softly the doctor said to Tom – “maybe it won’t be you Tom doing the spraying or planting the spuds”. “Aye your likely right” came back Tom.

The doctor said to the young boy – it was this that told me Tom too knew, that he probably would not see summer, but that he was proud to be still involved with his garden and while his body may not allow much movement his mind was clear and he was living every moment he could. Communication is at the heart of what we do and it can be very subtle.

The second C is co-ordination, when a patient needs to move from home to aged residential care they often come and spend a few days with us.

This can help get their symptoms better managed so it’s not such a hard move. Moving into a new place needs lots of coordination and at Hospice we are good at this and help families and our patient have a move that is as easy as possible.

The third and fourth C’s are for compassion and care for the dying – we get many many letters saying how important our compassion and care was to them

“To the Amazing staff

Words cannot express how thankful we are for the outstanding care and support you provided for our much-loved Mum and Nani, in the last 10 days when being at home

wasn’t an option you provided us all with a “second home” …. You are so wonderful, and we will be forever grateful.”

This is what Hospice Southland does – our motto “Living every moment” is what we constantly strive for, even when our patients are at their end of life. We simply couldn’t do this without you so thankyou so much for your generosity and care for us.

Dr Flora Gilkison

CEO Hospice Southland