PATHWAYS PAVES WAY FOR CAREGIVERS
Donations help provide hospice services such as home nursing, medical supplies and bereavement counseling to underinsured seniors
For the last decade, as Virginia Ortiz battled colon cancer, her husband, Raymond, did whatever he could do to help.
He drove her to dozens of doctors’ appointments, chemotherapy sessions and radiation treatments.
Over the years, the couple grew hopeful as the therapies extended her life. But the cancer kept coming back. Then last summer, as the Ortizes confronted the inevitable, the 67-year- old Virginia told her family she wanted to die in the comfort of her own home.
A hospital palliative care nurse suggested Sunnyvalebased Pathways Home Health and Hospice to help them through their journey.
“Without their support, I would have been lost in terms of medication and other things,’’ recalled Raymond Ortiz, a retired Santa Clara County Probation Department supervisor who remained at his wife’s side until she died on Sept. 20.
Ortiz, 68, has nothing but praise for Pathways’ approach.
“You are allowed to care for your loved one the way you want to, with their support,’’ he said. “They did not dictate anything. They simply supported me in what I was doing. That is what I appreciated.’’
Between weekly, then twiceweekly visits to their home from a “wonderful’’ Pathways nurse, whenever he needed advice or guidance from the nonprofit’s medical staff — day or night — someone always answered his calls, Ortiz said.
“If I wasn’t doing something right, I would ask them and I always got a response,’’ he said. “For that, I am greatly thankful.’’
Sandra Coolidge, Pathways’
president of philanthropy, said she knows how important that 24/7 connection is to patients and their families.
“None of us spend our lives preparing for the end,” said Coolidge, a former registered nurse who once worked for the Visiting Nurses Association, which advocates for home-based care. “We want community services like Pathways to be here not just today, but in the years to come.’’
Laurie Vasquez and her 88-year-old mother, Marion, certainly hope so.
The octogenarian suffers from congestive heart failure and some memory lapses, but the home health care services she receives from Pathways should help her stay as long as possible in the Peninsula home where she and her late husband raised their two children.
Every week, a registered nurse stops by to check on Marion Vasquez — monitoring her blood pressure, temperature, heart rate and breathing, her swollen ankles, her ability to walk, and whether she needs refills on prescription drugs, including her blood thinner.
A Pathways medical doctor oversees her medicines and, together with a Pathways team, can order any prescriptions, supplies or equipment, including walkers and hospital beds— both of which Vasquez now has at her disposal.
While familymembers divide their own time watching over Vasquez — Laurie visits during the days, her brother stays overnight — Pathways also offers all its patients a range of services, from monitoring a serious illness to patient and caregiver education, physical rehabilitation and safetymanagement in the home.
“Wewant tomake sure everything runs smoothly — that they are comfortable, and that they have their dignity,’’ said Monica Arnold, one of Marion’s nurses.
Pathway serves an average of 5,000 Bay Area home health and hospice patients a year — around 325 on any given day, Coolidge said.
While most of the nonprofits’ patients have health insurance to help pay for their care, some are either underinsured or uninsured. So, Coolidge said, Pathways pays for those who cannot afford the cost of their services. Donations from Wish Book readers would help.
Coolidge said the need for health care at home — especially for the aging Baby Boomer generation — has exploded since 1977, when Pathways was founded by a group of Stanford physicians and communitymembers who started Mid-Peninsula Health Services in downtown Palo Alto.
Their goal was to give terminally ill patients the option of staying at home through the end of their lives.
Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, Pathways continues to help patients and their families handle health crises, cope with chronic illness and find comfort during the final stages of life.
It does so with the help of a teamof doctors, nurses, social workers, and grief and spiritual counselors in Santa Clara, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties.
Raymond Ortiz said he and his wife didn’t use all Pathways services, but both were comforted knowing they were available.
“The hospice journey was new to us,’’ he said. “The nurse explained what we could expect to happen — and all of the options we had available to us as the disease progressed. It was very thorough and done in a very caring manner.’’
Coolidge said Pathways wouldn’t be a success without the help of 245 community volunteers, who last year provided nearly 14,500 hours of service to patients and their families.
For hospice patients, volunteers offer some companionship, provide respite for caregivers, run errands and help patients and families as needed.
“They may sit with a patient and listen to them, or read to them,’’ Coolidge said.
One woman in her late 80s volunteers almost every afternoon, doing clerical work at the Pathways Foundation.
The organization also provides free bereavement counseling sessions for any individual or group in the community who has experienced the loss of a loved one, whether or not they are connected to a Pathways patient.
In the last year, Coolidge said, Pathways provided 3,524 individual counseling sessions, and 419 group counseling sessions. Included were 195 individual or group sessions specifically designed for children.