Cathy Conway, the CEO of Hospice of Santa Cruz County, recently welcomed us to the Santa Cruz community and her organization to continue our filming of Hospice Care in America Today. Conway discovered her passion for hospice care when she volunteered at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis. Ever since then, she has made it her life’s work to continue to give back to her community. Conway understands the needs of the patients and families and takes pride in Hospice of Santa Cruz County’s ability to provide exceptional care through a community focused not-for-profit practice that puts their patients first.
We met with three families along with each of their care teams and immersed ourselves in the realities of hospice. The first family we met with was Judy and Robert Burgess, two former Penn State professors who have been together for about 62 years. The couple moved from Pennsylvania after discovering that they needed to be in Santa Cruz to receive the best treatment for Robert. Their team consists of Nurse Lin Wapner; Hospice Aide Belen Aguilera; and Board Certified Music Therapist, Anya Ismail. After Lin and Belen did their daily checkup on Robert, Anya serenaded Robert with two Beatles songs that she and Judy sang together, “Here Comes the Sun” and “Yesterday.” By the time they were finished, Robert’s eyes had opened and it was clear he was listening and enjoyed the music.
Licensed Clinical Social Worker Katherine Sloan discussed a recent addition to their services, Concurrent Care for Children, which serves medically fragile children with life limiting illness with hospice care while they continue to receive curative treatments. The whole family is supported through the program which allows the child to stay at home with their family and all that is familiar and comforting to them.
The next day, we met with Maria and Juan Hernandez, the grandparents of patient Patrick Rodriguez, 16-years-old, who is in the Concurrent Care for Children program. After an interview with his grandmother Maria, it was evident the immense amount of love and faith within this family. Patient Care Manager RN, Monica Newitt was there to check on Patrick and the family and discussed in her interview how hard this family works to care for Patrick; they are always by his side making sure he gets everything he needs to be as comfortable as possible.
That afternoon we headed to Valley Haven to visit with one more family, patient Eva Tannenbaum-Cummins and her daughter Silvia Denguson, as well as her Nurse, Amy Bigard and Medical Social Worker, Janet Moncrief. We discovered Eva is a very dynamic woman, fleeing from Germany to Seattle as a teenager from the Nazi regime during WWII making her one of the few Greatest Generation and Holocaust survivors left. Around age 75, she wrote and performed a one-woman play about her experience during the Holocaust and performed the play until her late 90s. Her daughter, Silvia, read us a few lines from the play during her interview that we’re excited to share in the film. Board Certified Music therapist, Anya Ismail, came and sang the song, “Edelweiss” for Eva who began singing the song moments after it was over, demonstrating the benefits of music therapy for those with forms of dementia who often can’t speak, but find the ability to sing when presented with a song.
Thank you to Hospice of Santa Cruz County for welcoming us and allowing us to share these stories.