Please join us on the evening of Thursday, June 7, to enjoy the Hospicare gardens, light a luminaria in memory or in honor of a loved one, and share in refreshments.

There will be a special program of remembrance featuring live music from Jan Nigro, and from the Women Singin' singers. The program will also include poetry and conclude with candlelight on the pond.

• 7:30 PM: Reception and Luminaria Lighting
• 8:00 PM: Program of Remembrance

The event is free to attend. Luminarias can be personalized for a suggested donation of $25. Donations are greatly appreciated, but not required.

If you wish to have a more enduring memorial at Hospicare for your loved one, you may order a teak bench or an inscribed paving stone for the Memory Walk in the Hospicare gardens.

The event is open to the public, and all are welcome to attend. Anybody who has not received an invitation but wishes to attend can RSVP by calling 607-272-0212.

Registration for the 9th annual Women Swimmin' for Hospicare opened at 6 AM on Monday, May 7. A mere 14.5 hours later, we reached our limit of 350 swimmers!

Over the next 2.5 months, these women will be raising funds on behalf of Hospicare in support of their efforts to swim 1.2 miles across Cayuga Lake. On Saturday, August 18, they will travel from across the US and Canada to arrive at the Ithaca Yacht Club, ready to swim. At the time of this writing, we have already raised over $40,000 toward our goal of $290,000!

We're still looking for experienced boaters to escort swimmers safely across the lake. To register to be a boater, go to www.womenswimmin.org and click the "Register Here" button.
 
If you're not able to swim or boat but would still like to be involved in Hospicare's largest fundraiser, please consider volunteering. We rely on almost 100 volunteers on land to help with many aspects of the event, including: setting up; cleaning up; organizing swimmers, boaters, and parking; selling merchandise and raffle tickets; collecting donations for breakfast; and any of a number of other tasks that help make Women Swimmin' happen. To sign up to volunteer, go to www.womenswimmin.org and follow the "Volunteer to Help" link in the left menu.

To make a donation in support of Women Swimmin', go to www.womenswimmin.org and click the "Support a Participant" button. To make a general donation to Hospicare, click the "Donate to Hospicare" button on the same page.

We are so grateful to all those who swim, boat, volunteer, and donate to help make this annual event a resounding success, and a celebration of community!

If you'd like to be added to our e-mail list to receive updates, please contact us at info@womenswimmin.org.

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 16, Hospicare will host the next program in the Good Grief series, but this event will be a collaborative effort. Kira Lallas, LMSW, hospice and community bereavement counselor, will co-facilitate with Julie Kulik of Earth Arts.

Good Grief events are for children ages 5-12 who are grieving a loss, and typically include parents/caregivers/families to some degree.

This event marks both a departure and a return to form. Kira explains: "Before we offered our weeknight Good Grief programs, Hospicare used to have a once-per-year program called Good Grief Day where we had kids come for the whole day to process after a loss. When my position was expanded to full-time, one of the goals was to offer more ongoing support for young people. So we moved from one day to multiple times throughout the year, in addition to providing one-on-one support in a counseling atmosphere for kids and families after a loss."

She continues, "So this program is both different and a hearkening back to programs from years ago. We're not moving back to a one-day-per-year model, but this integrates some elements of the old Good Grief Day into our ongoing support."

Julie Kulik brings expertise as both an artist and experienced nature denizen to work with children more deeply in both areas. This is Hospicare's first collaboration with Julie, although she and Kira have been considering such a partnership for some time. The passing of Julie's Earth Arts business partner, Dale Bryner (who died this past fall in the Hospicare residence), made this occasion all the more opportune.

The program will have two main parts. From 12 to 4 PM, the kids will be guided in fun, creative outdoor activities including the use of clay and natural materials, with an emphasis on being an observer and participant in nature. This will include quiet time and reflective discussion. There will be concurrent reflective, artistic nature activities for the adult caregivers who choose to stay, mostly separate from the kids' activities.

Although participating families can leave or kids can be picked up by their caregivers at 4 PM, we will continue with optional time for sharing. Hospicare will then provide a picnic for families to spend some social time meeting and enjoying each others' company in our beautiful gardens and grounds. If the weather isn't favorable, the picnic will be held inside; but the nature activities will be outside, rain or shine, as long as the weather isn't deemed dangerous.

The Good Grief series is built on the understanding that kids naturally process many experiences through play and creativity. Kira elaborates, "We want to let kids be kids, and do something that is enjoyable and natural to them at a time of loss. By doing that at Hospicare, in a context where death and grief are normal, we hope to have their experience feel somewhat normalized, and to give families some tools and language to continue processing when they're not here."

Although this program is free and open to the public, and kids are not required to have had loved ones on Hospicare services to participate, we do request that participants register by June 11. For more information or to register, contact Kira at 607-272-0212 or klallas@hospicare.org.

By Jane Schantz, FNP

This is the final of four articles on integrative therapies used here at Hospicare.

The first article introduced integrative medicine and provided a brief overview of some integrative therapies. The second article described how we use massage in hospice, and the third discussed acupuncture.

In this article, we will briefly discuss the use of herbal treatments and homeopathy. "Herbal medicine" and "homeopathy" are terms that are frequently misappropriated and used generically to refer to what people think of as "natural medicine," but each of these is considered an entire system of medicine unto itself.

Read the whole article as a PDF.

In honor of National EMS Week (May 20-26), Bangs Ambulance announced the Sentimental Journey Program, a new collaboration with Hospicare:


Many hospice patients no longer have the same mobility they enjoyed throughout life. By providing free transportation in medical service vehicles with the accompaniment of a paramedic or EMT, Bangs will give patients the opportunity to experience something they might otherwise find prohibitively complex, uncomfortable, or expensive.

Details are being finalized, so stay tuned for updates:

• Bangs Ambulance website (www.bangsambulance.com) 
• Bangs Ambulance Facebook page (www.facebook.com/BangsAmbulance) 
• Hospicare Facebook page (www.facebook.com/hospicare) 

We offer our utmost gratitude for this gesture of community and goodwill, and we're looking forward to working with Bangs on a new way to deliver on our promise: It's about how you LIVE!

Elaine Mansfield's name may be familiar to those who follow Hospicare news or participate in our programs.

She has contributed articles to this e-newsletter and to our website. She is also a trained Hospicare volunteer, and since last Fall, has facilitated our Continuing Bonds bereavement group for women who have lost spouses/partners. In September, she will begin a new Hospicare/Lifelong group called "Standing in Our New Lives: Women Moving Forward after the Death of a Spouse or Partner." She also continues to help in the office.

Elaine's personal grief journey is the inspiration behind much of her work:


Elaine has begun channeling that writing into a weekly blog at elainemansfield.com/blog/. She is also a nutritionist, exercise trainer, and women's health counselor, and her website (www.elainemansfield.com) features a wealth of information on those topics as well. She continues:


Since we cannot overstate the importance of attending to one's own health and well-being at times of grief and heightened stress, we believe this information and testimony may prove valuable to a great many of our readers.

Hospicare seeks to provide bereavement support not only to our patients' loved ones, but also to the community as a whole. Sharing personal journeys and insights can be very normalizing and validating to many facing grief and loss. Visit www.hospicare.org/for-those-grieving-a-loss/ to peruse our articles -- including several by Elaine -- on a variety of bereavement-related topics. Visit her blog and website for more of her thoughts, reflections, and helpful resources.

We'd like to acknowledge all who helped make the 2011-2012 Hospicare Musicale Series a reality.

In conjunction with the Ithaca College School of Music, Hospicare hosted a total of three musicales in the Nina K. Miller Hospicare Center Great Room, in late 2011 and in the first half of 2012.

These performances were free and open to the community, and many staff, volunteers, and visitors were treated to the skilled musical artistry of an assortment of talented young musicians from Ithaca College.

We're hoping to resume the series once the new academic year begins in the fall, so stay tuned! For further information, contact Hospicare Music Coordinator Jayne Demakos at jdemakos@hospicare.org or 607-272-0212.

 
Thanks to everybody who turned out for the May 6 staged reading of Peaches and Bird, this time hosted at the Ulysses Philomathic Library in Trumansburg.

Representing Hospicare in talk backs after the performance were Residence Manager Tricia Wrublewski, RN, CHPN, and Residence Nurse Mary Ott, RN.
 

Residence Manager Tricia Wrublewski, RN, CHPN

Residence Nurse Mary Ott, RN

 

















Although this was not explicitly a Hospicare event, we still received small donations totaling $22. Every little bit counts, and we remain thankful for the enduring generosity of our community!


Peaches and Bird is a moving piece about women's friendship and loss, end-of-life care, and laughter and joy. It was written by former Hospicare board member Carol Kammen, and is directed by Sue Perlgut (known for the documentary Beets and Beans: Living and Dying with Hospice).

In the April edition, we published a review by Hospicare Music Coordinator Jayne Demakos after she attended one of the performances at the Kitchen Theatre.

June dates include:

• Women Singin' - June 5; 5:30-7:00 PM  
• Continuing Bonds Support Group - June 5; 5:30-7:00 PM (group ends June 5; current members only, please) 
• Evening Bereavement Support Group - June 6 & 20; 5:30-7:00 PM
• Mindfulness Practice - Wednesdays; 7:30-9:00 PM  
• Illuminations - June 7, 7:30 PM 
• Registration deadline for "How Men Grieve" - June 8 (event occurs June 14, 6:00-8:00 PM)  
• Registration deadline for "Good Grief Program" - June 11 (event occurs June 16, 12:00-5:30 PM) 
• Tuesday Lunch Group - June 12; 12:00 PM
• Wednesday Breakfast Group - June 27; 8:30 AM