CHI Health at Home WALKS WITH FAMILIES in LIFE’S QUIET RIPPLES agency offers home-health, palliative and hospice services

The connections we make at our life’s beginning grow and spread slowly and widely over time, like ripples when a pebble drops into the water.

But as we near our end, Michelle Cooley, observes that those ripples become smaller, more focused and inward.

“Most people, as they’re nearing the end of life, family and others they are closest to and love the most become very important,” says Cooley, FNP-C, ACHPN and hospice nurse practitioner for CHI Health at Home. “To be able to have family surrounding them and giving them love and their presence is very healing.”

CHI Health at Home helps foster the kinds of memories that bring comfort and meaning in these times, turning them into gifts.

“We may not be able to cure, but we can help the patient and family heal,” Cooley says, adding that CHI also provides bereavement services for the family after the loved one dies.

Cooley, a nurse practitioner who now works as a consultant for hospice nurses, has worked the gamut of areas in nursing, from premature babies to geriatrics. “I’ve taken care of babies just over a pound to elderly patients over 106 years old,” she says.

In the early 1980s, when the ministry of hospice was just developing, she volunteered for a hospice agency, spending time reading to patients, helping them write letters, or just sitting with them in quiet moments.

She’s now rediscovered the importance of this phase of care. “I just think it’s so important patients die with dignity and have a good quality of life until they die,” Cooley says. “We’re all going to die, so let’s make it a good death.”

With improved palliative-care services and symptom management, it’s more possible than ever, she says. “I work with an entire team — everyone from chaplaincy to social work to working with nurses, physicians and nurse aides.”

She works not only in the Fargo-Moorhead area, but with outlying regional CHI agencies, including those in Williston, Valley City, Dickinson, Bismarck in North Dakota; and Little Falls, Breckenridge and Albany in Minnesota.

“What’s different with us than some of the other (hospice) agencies is that we offer home health, palliative care and hospice services, so there is continuity of care,” she says. “Often the patient has the same nurse the whole way through.”

And because CHI is faith-based, workers can meet the spiritual needs of the patients.

“Our mission is based on Catholic values, so there’s a very big spiritual component,” Cooley says, adding that, though people of all or no faith can receive services, the whole person can be addressed.

This might lead to following up on a request for prayer, for instance. Once, a blind, elderly patient with heart disease and significant hearing loss told Cooley she’d been asking God why she’s still alive, since she can’t see or hear. He told her, “Because you can still pray.” “So, she prays,” Cooley says, “for her family, her caregivers, everyone. It was very touching to be able to acknowledge that.”

Cooley urges anyone 18 or older to fill out a healthcare directive. “It’s a gift you give your family.” She also encourages those who think they may need hospice to reach out sooner than later. “Nationally, a high number of patients die within seven to 10 days of being on [hospice] services,” she says. “If we can get them [connected] when they have six months to live, we can do our magic and help them live with quality until they die.”

CHI Health at Home also can be a critical conduit between the patient and family when past issues or communication issues arise. “It’s hard for people to die if they have unresolved business,” Cooley says. “We can help the patient have closure, so they can have a peaceful death,” which also brings peace to the family.

“What we do is very rewarding. It’s not just a job, it’s a mission,” she adds. “I think most people in healthcare have that feeling, but in home health, palliative care and hospice — especially in a spiritually-based organization — that’s even more valued. We have the privilege to care for people at a very intimate time in their lives.”

TO LEARN MORE, or set up an informational visit, call 888-538-0069.