Palliative care nurse `a hero and an angel'
As COVID-19 spread across the province, Megan Leary was on the front lines at Surrey Memorial, where she has been a nurse in a palliative care complex unit.
In addition to working full time at the hospital in the midst of the pandemic, teaching nursing courses at Stenberg College and caring for an ill aunt, Megan found time to care for Sheri Mainella's mother, who was battling cancer at home. Mainella's mother died this past July.
“Megan is a hero and an angel,” Mainella said in nominating Leary as a COVID-19 hero. Whether it is calls from friends in desperate need of advice or aging relatives in her own family, Mainella said Leary gives herself to everyone in need and never says she can't help.
“With Megan's direction, my family was able to make decisions and have comfort in knowing that we were doing the right thing,” Mainella said.
Leary has been nursing for more than 10 years, but said she finds her work in palliative care to be the most rewarding.
“It's kind of the best of both worlds where you get to support people through really challenging times in their life,” she said. “But you also get acute clinical experience, which is really exciting and keeps things interesting.
“It definitely can take a toll for sure,” she added, both physically and emotionally. “But I've worked with an amazing team. And so you just kind of work through it together.”
“I recharge at work sometimes,” Leary said. “You get to support people in this challenging time. It's such an honour.”
When Leary was in Grade 11, she started caring for Mainella's kids and the relationship has grown to include the entire family, from Mainella's mother, to her father Frank Antolcic, to Mainella's sister and her children.
“I started out basically as a family nanny,” Leary said. “I would go on family trips with them to Whistler or whatnot, so I grew up with Sheri and (Mainella's sister) Nancy and the kids. I kind of just adopted myself into the family.”
Mainella said Leary is “like an aunt” to her kids. After Mainella's mother died in the summer, Leary gave everyone in the family — including each of the eight grandchildren — letters that she had written with Mainella's mother.
“I don't know how or when she completed this heartwarming task with my mother as she was so busy working on the front lines,” Mainella said. “My family will cherish these last words from my mother forever.”
“That was such an honour,” Leary said. “I felt like it was really important for her kids to hold on to a really tactile piece of that they could kind of look back to. Grief is so complicated, you never know when you really need a piece of that person.”
Leary said working with people at the end of their life humbles her “every single day.
“I think when you're humbled every day, you understand what really matters, which really is just relationships with each other. That's all we have, at the end of all of it. And COVID really hit that home again — that really, all we have is each other.”