A Healing Heart: A hospice nurse’s journey from illness to purpose
Working in hospice care is a difficult but rewarding profession. Many find it hard to understand how such a proximity to serious illness and death could be a blessing, but read on to hear how Kristie Szarpa, Mountain Valley’s senior vice president of practice management, found joy in serving as a hospice nurse.
Blog author:
Kristie Szarpa
MSN, ANP-BC, ACHPN
Senior Vice President of Practice Management
Having faced my mortality with profoundly serious heart disease when I was just 25 years old, I marveled over the nurses who cared for me. I mean to tell you I was in awe of them. Though I was blessed to have exceptional physician care, it was easily the nurses who got me through my bout with advanced heart failure and saved my life.
A few years later, when my health had restored and my heart had strengthened, I knew I had to be a nurse. It was as if everything in my life had pointed me in the direction of nursing, and the pull was unmistakable. It wasn’t until April of 2009 that I realized my calling was not just to be a nurse, but to be a hospice nurse.
My first week of orientation with hospice I followed nurses, social workers, and chaplains to patient’s homes and watched with pure joy and wonder as they administered their expert care to patients facing serious illness. The ease and honor with which they embraced illness and end-of-life care enveloped me like a blanket of comfort. It felt like waking up from a dream in which I was gently remembering what I had always known.
On the Friday of that first orientation week, it was just before Easter. I had driven my own car that day and followed my peers from house to house. Our last visit was tucked back in a neighborhood of winding roads, and when our day had finished, I got into my car and began driving the winding road back to the main road home. The sun was shining, and the radio was playing a sweet song of praise. It was then that it washed over me. “This will be my life work. This is why I am here, and this is what God has intended for me.” The sense of knowing was unmistakable and has remained with me all the days and hours of my life since.
I pulled the car over and sat on the side of the road, tears of joy streaming down my face. My heart felt like it would burst with emotion and sincere joy like I had never known before.
That was 14 years ago now and I can still remember that day. I can still feel the cool spring air, hear that song, and capture that feeling of knowing, “this is where I belong.” This is good, to have this knowing tucked away in my heart, because living and working in sickness and death is… well… not without its challenges.
In the years that would follow that sunny spring day, this path has led me to experience everything from exuberant joy and light to darkness and despair. Living so close to death is tricky. Walking in sickness with others, day in and day out, doing life alongside those who are experiencing the challenges that come with serious illness or end of life decline is so tender… and so tough. I find myself building up my armor and “thickening my skin” so I have the strength to endure, but I strive to remain tender. My desire is to feel and truly take in the depth of each soul, to honor each life, legacy, and memory.
As is true with all nurses, I suppose, we do not just walk this path with our patients. We end up walking this path with our own family and friends as well. We become “that person” that everyone comes to when sickness strikes. When decisions need to be made. When care and comfort are in order. We lay our own to rest, having shepherded them through their illness no matter how brief or extensive, and we find ourselves experiencing illness and death in our personal world just as we do in our profession. This is a gift, a treasure, and a very heavy responsibility.
My heart holds the memories of thousands of patients, their families, and my own family and friends, who have honored me with the opportunity to provide care, comfort, and counsel. What an amazing gift. Time and excellent medical care played a role in healing my now healthy heart, but the most significant heart-healing came from sharing my heart with others. It was then that I was truly healed; hospice work has healed me.
Hospice has been about living. Hospice IS for living… because until the very moment we pass, we are alive.
Hospice care is for everyone, all of us, no matter where you have come from, what you believe, where you have been, or what you have done. The grace, dignity, and comfort that Hospice care offers is a common thread that weaves us all together.
If the time comes that you or someone you love is facing a serious illness, it is my fervent prayer and hope that you will seek out hospice and palliative care services and that you, too, will experience some element of healing by extension of the tender, expert care that Mountain Valley offers.
