Fundraising Caring Canines Calendar 2010 Calendar Calendar Entries Sashi, Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care | Sashi, Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care |
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When I first became a hospice social worker, I read about how dogs and other animals, through their unconditional love and acceptance, can bring great comfort to those with life limiting illness. I applied to the local SPCA of Anne Arundel County, Maryland to adopt a dog that would work with me as a hospice therapy dog. Within a week I received a phone message saying, “We have the perfect dog for you.”
 Sashi, Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care Sashi is a pure bred Lhasa Apso who was turned in to the shelter at age 7 months for no apparent reason. Her conditioning was poor and her coat tattered, and her hair completely covering her face, causing her to nearly walk into a tree on our first venture out of the shelter. After good grooming and a nutritious diet, she went through two rigorous obedience/therapy dog training sessions and began her work. Her first visit was to the home of a young woman dying of lung cancer. At the sight of this little dog, she began to cry, remembering her own dogs, now gone. Sashi walked slowly to her side, placed her head on her knee and received her embrace. She then positioned herself protectively at her feet for the rest of the visit, off to a good start. Sashi came into her own when I began work at a residential hospice house and she met Susan Karr (in the attached photos), a 62 year old woman diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) who was with us for 14 months until her death in May 2007. Sue could not move her arms or legs and had difficulty swallowing without choking, causing her extreme anxiety. Sue loved dogs. Several times a day Sashi would enter Sue’s room, place her front paws on the mattress at the end of the bed and ”walk” her way up to the head of the bed. With my signal of two taps on the place where she was to jump, she would leap up and begin to snuggle with Sue. These photos speak more than words could ever say about the love, joy and exhilaration that animals bring to those suffering from devastating illness. Sashi has graduated to most intensive level of hospice care, working on the Seasons Hospice Inpatient Unit with patients and their families who are admitted for management of complex symptoms including pain, respiratory distress, agitation, confusion as well as patients who are to be compassionately extubated from life support. As always, she immediately senses pain and distress and moves toward those who are suffering. The following is a quote from our medical director Dr. Harold Bob who describes how Sashi’s work is integrated into the inpatient unit: “One of the saddest things we do on a hospice unit is compassionate extubation. This occurs when a patient has been placed on a ventilator, with the hope of reversing a condition, and it becomes all too clear that nothing short of a miracle will cause reversal, and that continuing the machine is not in the patient's interest. Recently, we had a mother beyond saving, on a ventilator, and a family decision had been made to remove the machine and the breathing tube. Her two children were present, they were young and they were sobbing. As so often happens, after stopping the machine, transition did not occur right away. The children had been playing with our units "therapy dog," Sashi, and Sashi came with them and sat with them as everyone waited. For 45 minutes Sashi sat still as the family stroked her fur, she did not move except to lick their hands. Her owner, our social worker, described to me that ‘Sashi bore witness to and absorbed their grief in such an organic, tactile, primal way that few humans could do.’ Submitted by: Jane Elizabeth Fisher, MSW, LGSW Seasons Hospice and Palliative Care Northwest Inpatient Unit, 3rd Floor Randallstown, MD |
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