Charles Kong Soo

While many peo­ple still as­so­ciate hos­pices with death, dy­ing and the smell of an­ti­sep­tics, dis­in­fec­tants, and pun­gent chem­i­cals, all these neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions and pre­con­cep­tions are quick­ly dis­pelled up­on en­ter­ing Vi­tas House.

Lo­cat­ed on the com­pound of the St James Med­ical Com­plex, Vi­tas House pro­vides free med­ical and nurs­ing care for ter­mi­nal­ly ill can­cer pa­tients.

The en­vi­ron­ment is im­mac­u­late­ly clean and com­fort­able, with its pris­tine white walls, nat­ur­al sun­light, am­bi­ent light­ing, and mod­ern fit­tings that be­lie its pur­pose.

The at­mos­phere at Vi­tas House is light and cheer­ful; fam­i­ly mem­bers sit in the air-con­di­tioned lob­by, and oth­ers bring gifts and com­fort food for their loved ones as they sit and talk.

Mem­bers of staff move with qui­et pro­fi­cien­cy, at­tend­ing to their pa­tients and tasks while sooth­ing mu­sic can be heard in some rooms.

There are no sad faces, no de­spair or gloomi­ness among pa­tients or their rel­a­tives.

Vi­tas House, a sub­sidiary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety that be­gan as a dream of Dr George Laquis, for­mer chair­man of the so­ci­ety, is en­tire­ly fund­ed by gen­er­ous do­na­tions and has a ded­i­cat­ed staff.

The hos­pice staff cares for 12 peo­ple at max­i­mum oc­cu­pan­cy.

While some have moved on, new staff mem­bers are just as mo­ti­vat­ed to en­sure that the peo­ple in their care en­joy life to the fullest and can die peace­ful­ly with dig­ni­ty and as pain-free as pos­si­ble.

40 years of self­less, vol­un­tary hos­pice work

Pa­tri­cia “Pat” Stollmey­er, 85, the co-founder of Vi­tas House, is a re­tired reg­is­tered nurse trained in the UK. She has ded­i­cat­ed more than 40 years of her life to self­less, vol­un­tary hos­pice work, qui­et­ly tak­ing care of pa­tients and pro­vid­ing es­sen­tial sup­port at the fi­nal stage of their lives, un­der the radar and with­out fan­fare.

WE mag­a­zine sat down with Stollmey­er in a bright, con­vivial meet­ing room at Vi­tas House that re­flect­ed the hos­pice’s en­vi­ron­ment and talked about her work along with Dr As­tra Chang-Rams­den, hos­pice and pal­lia­tive care physi­cian.

With hu­mil­i­ty, she em­pha­sised that hos­pice care and the care of pa­tients were the fo­cus, not her.

Stollmey­er said, “Vi­tas House Hos­pice was a dream of Dr George Laquis, which be­came a re­al­i­ty. He had a vi­sion to com­ple­ment the work of the so­ci­ety, pro­vid­ing sup­port for those who had ex­haust­ed all treat­ments and had a life ex­pectan­cy of six months or less.

“I sup­pose you could say that Dr Jack­ie Sab­ga and I were co-founders as we were there from the start.

“Af­ter agree­ing to vol­un­teer at the Liv­ing Wa­ter Hos­pice, I trained in hos­pice care, which in­clud­ed pain man­age­ment and symp­tom con­trol.”

She said that luck­i­ly for her, this was done at St Christo­pher’s Hos­pice in Lon­don un­der the watch­ful eye of Dame Ci­ce­ly Saun­ders, the founder of the mod­ern hos­pice move­ment.

Stollmey­er start­ed hos­pice work when Liv­ing Wa­ter opened Trinidad’s first hos­pice in 1983.

She ac­cept­ed their in­vi­ta­tion to work at the hos­pice with much re­luc­tance, as she said she did not feel she would be any good with dy­ing peo­ple.

Stollmey­er ex­pressed how sur­prised she was feel­ing so at ease in that en­vi­ron­ment, ef­fort­less­ly en­gag­ing in con­ver­sa­tions with pa­tients about their hopes and fears, even as they ap­proached the end of their lives.

She added, “More im­por­tant­ly, we could take away their pain and oth­er dis­tress­ing symp­toms. I am pas­sion­ate about pain con­trol.”

When asked if it was some­one in her fam­i­ly or a friend who was in pain or suf­fer­ing that she want­ed to help that start­ed her on her life path or call­ing, she replied, “Not at all.”

Stollmey­er, the moth­er of two—a daugh­ter and son—and grand­moth­er of four—two grand­daugh­ters and two grand­sons—said she sees fear, hope, peace, love, and ac­cep­tance in pa­tients’ eyes at the hos­pice.

Stollmey­er lis­tens to their fears and then ex­plains how they can be al­layed. This com­forts them and their fam­i­ly mem­bers.

‘To lis­ten is the most im­por­tant verb in hos­pice care’

“To lis­ten is the most im­por­tant verb in hos­pice care,” she said. “A pa­tient’s sto­ry, their hopes and fears, and their fam­i­ly’s hopes and fears should be as im­por­tant to us as it is to them.”

For Stollmey­er, there have been many ful­fill­ing and low ex­pe­ri­ences in her work. She shared that An­nette Agard, an RN col­league, and she did home care in the 90s and they strug­gled to find a doc­tor who would vis­it with them.

Stollmey­er said Dr Ger­ard Far­fan of­fered and con­tin­ued to do vis­its with them un­til Dr Jacque­line Sab­ga came along.

The 20 years she did home hos­pice care with Dr Sab­ga and the ear­li­er years with Agard were the most ful­fill­ing of her life, Stollmey­er said.

Dr Sab­ga, the for­mer chair­man and med­ical di­rec­tor of Vi­tas House, left the hos­pice and moved on to open her own NGO, Promise House, in San­ta Cruz, help­ing chil­dren and their fam­i­lies who are go­ing through the rigours of chemother­a­py.

Sab­ga, she said, is her very dear­est friend and col­league. “Those years are the high­light of my hos­pice life and gave me the most joy,” Stollmey­er said.

She de­scribed Sab­ga as a com­pas­sion­ate, car­ing, and lov­ing hu­man be­ing and said un­der her guid­ance, Vi­tas House was known for every­thing good in hos­pice care.

“It was a hap­py place, and I think fam­i­lies were pleased that their loved ones peace­ful­ly end­ed their lives there,” Stollmey­er said. “She is my lega­cy.”

Stollmey­er mused that one could say that “home care is the true hos­pice care.” She ex­plained that peo­ple should re­mem­ber that “hos­pice” is a con­cept, not a build­ing.

Stollmey­er added that a build­ing is on­ly need­ed when home care be­comes im­pos­si­ble.

She said that Chelsea Gar­cia and her LIVHealth or­gan­i­sa­tion was the on­ly group do­ing home hos­pice care in Trinidad.

Hos­pice or end-of-life care re­mains the re­liev­ing of pain and symp­tom con­trol and con­stant­ly lis­ten­ing to the wor­ries and fears of pa­tients and their fam­i­lies. The good news is that the re­sources to do that are avail­able now.

Stollmey­er ac­knowl­edged the changes and ad­vance­ments in treat­ment, tech­niques, and tech­nol­o­gy for the care of pa­tients since she start­ed to the present. She said the prob­lem or chal­lenge of sourc­ing es­sen­tial med­ica­tion has be­come rare to­day.

There would be a short­age of a par­tic­u­lar drug now and then, but noth­ing hin­dered pa­tient care.

New drugs are avail­able for dif­fer­ent symp­toms, she said, but the true and test­ed tra­di­tion­al ones are still used.

Call for more young peo­ple and health­care pro­fes­sion­als to get in­volved

When asked if there were any chal­lenges for her dur­ing the COVID-19 lock­down, Stollmey­er replied that the sad­ness was the dif­fi­cul­ty rel­a­tives had in vis­it­ing pa­tients.

But every­one un­der­stood the rea­son and com­plied with the rules. Whether there were any young peo­ple in­volved in hos­pice work or pal­lia­tive care, she said young peo­ple, school­child­ren, came by to vis­it the pa­tients oc­ca­sion­al­ly in groups.

Stollmey­er said at Christ­mas, school choirs came by and ser­e­nad­ed the pa­tients, who in turn sang with them. She said Bish­op Anstey High School (BAHS) stu­dents were par­tic­u­lar­ly loy­al and of­ten came to sing for past pupils and past teach­ers in their care, and every­one was able to en­joy their songs.

Mu­sic plays an im­por­tant part in hos­pice care, she added.

Stollmey­er would like to see more young peo­ple and health­care pro­fes­sion­als in­volved in hos­pice work or pal­lia­tive care. Asked if she had an in­tern or ap­pren­tice, some­one who she could pass the ba­ton to as she shared her years of knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence, Stollmey­er said she hoped she had al­ready done that with the nurs­es, doc­tors, and car­ers who have worked with her.

She said she was al­ways will­ing to share and re­ceive ad­vice. “We have ex­cel­lent hos­pice doc­tors in Trinidad, and the hope is that many more young doc­tors will choose hos­pice and pal­lia­tive care as their spe­cial­i­ty,” Stollmey­er said.

On whether she did any oth­er char­i­ta­ble or hu­man­i­tar­i­an work or sup­port­ed any en­vi­ron­men­tal caus­es, she said hos­pice work had tak­en up most of her time these last 41 years. Her fam­i­ly mem­bers were very much in­volved in en­vi­ron­men­tal caus­es, and she helped when­ev­er she could.

“There is an ur­gent need for fa­cil­i­ties for hos­pice care in south Trinidad, and I hope the Gov­ern­ment and the pri­vate sec­tor will do some­thing about that,” she said.

Dr As­tra Chang-Rams­den said her full-time job at Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal was as a reg­is­trar in hos­pice and pal­lia­tive med­i­cine un­der Dr Karen Cox and Dr Eliz­a­beth Per­sad. At present, she has been the ad­mit­ting physi­cian at Vi­tas House for the last five years.

She said that pal­lia­tive care and hos­pice care are sim­i­lar, but there are some key dif­fer­ences. How­ev­er, both fo­cus on eas­ing pain and dis­com­fort, re­duc­ing stress, and help­ing peo­ple have the high­est qual­i­ty of life pos­si­ble. She said hos­pice care fo­cus­es on the qual­i­ty of life when a cure is no longer pos­si­ble or the bur­dens of treat­ment out­weigh the ben­e­fits.