End-of-life caregivers find joy in profession

OREM — When Peggy Cann first played her harp in a hospital for a friend, the woman in the next room asked the nurse to "send in the angels" playing the "heavenly music." Now, she uses her music every day to help relieve pain when the medications aren't strong enough to.

Cann is an independent nurse who works with hospice care. Doctors typically refer patients to hospice care when they have a terminal illness, and often times family and friends aren't equipped to handle the transition. That's where Cann and other independent nurses come in.

Cann has been certified to use music for healing and transition. An art-form, she says, that requires being in tune with her patients.

"I'll watch their breathing and it's almost like watching a conductor," Cann said. "If their breathing slows, the music slows and the patient is my conductor for the music."

Virginia Yaeger is one of Cann's patients. She has spent the last 10 months at Greenwood Manor, coping with a mysterious adrenal gland illness. Her only escape, she says, is music.

"It's therapeutic and it lifts my spirits," Yaeger said. "Really, I felt like I was in another realm. I didn't feel like I was here. It was like I was lifted into another realm."

Verna Nelson, a hospice nurse, cared for Yaeger's husband at Greenwood Manor before he passed away years ago. She has seen the benefit of treating people with music, even in the simplest ways.

"Music helps people to relax," Nelson said. "A lot of the problems arise because people are unable to relax and get a good night's rest. Life is much more worthwhile if a person can get a good night's sleep."

Nelson says part of her job is helping her patients and their families accept and somehow move forward through the natural process of life — a process Yaeger says people are reluctant to accept.

"A lot of people don't have the right attitude toward death," Yaeger said. "There's a lot of fear."

Some of that fear she says comes from those who love us most.

"I know several cases here where the person wants to go and they should've died several years ago, but the husband, wife, or children will not let them go," Nelson said.

And some people choose to fight, or concede death, alone.

"People that are alone that say they don't want to bother their family," Nelson said. "They don't want to let them know what they're going through. So it's heartbreaking to see a person who feels alone at the time they know their life is limited."

Jody Dustin has been a hospice nurse for eight years. She has watched many families and individuals cope with the reality of death.

"Hospice is to help maintain hope," Dustin said. "It's to help guide. It's to help educate. It's to bring relief to, maybe, a situation that the patient or the family does not know in what direction to go."

But, she says, that no matter the emotional state of her patients, her job is to follow their lead.

"The patient and the family is the driver and you're there to give the directions. And if they don't want to go down a certain path because they're not ready, then maybe you can just try to find a detour."

Dustin says that the profession isn't a sad one.

"It's very rewarding to be able to be invited into these people's home at such critical emotional time," Dustin says.

But some of the reward may come from the very purpose Dustin serves, who works hard to make the hospice environment positive for patient and caretakers alike. Or because people like Cann find a way to give patients a moment of rest when they need it most.

"It's very satisfying that I might be a messenger," Cann said. "The peace comes from heaven. And if I can bring that and usher that in that's very satisfying."

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