Following two previous breast cancer diagnoses and uprooting from her home in Devon to Stotfold to be closer to family, Shelagh, was struggling to see how things could get better. But just four days into her stay on our Inpatient Unit, she was feeling relaxed, listened to, and blessed.
"I feel like I’m in heaven because it’s just perfect here," Shelagh explained. "The staff make sure my temperature's correct and my position's correct, and they’re working as hard as they can on my pain. Their patience and their attitude are absolutely marvellous.
"When one of the doctors is talking to me, I feel that I am being treated as an equal and as somebody with a brain. They hear the words I’m saying, and they act on those words. Psychologically, that is a huge, huge bonus.
"The whole atmosphere is one of relaxation. I almost feel like my soul is being nourished, which it needed because I've been in a hard place for a very long time. I feel like I’m being looked after emotionally as well as physically, which is really important."
Shelagh went on to describe her prior experience with our Family Support Service, through whom she received counselling when she first moved to the local area.
"I was so lucky with my counsellor," Shelagh recalled. "It didn't take very many sessions before she hit the nail on the head, and once we found the root of my despair, everything fell into place. She was absolutely excellent, and those conversations helped me reconnect with my own thought processes again.
"It was like she just opened a door and there was the sunshine… I found that priceless. You have a choice when you have a life-limiting illness: you can either live your life living, or you can live it dying.
"It's about quality of life in the Hospice and I would say that the counselling and everything that's here offers everybody that choice: to actually have quality, end-of-life care."
