everyday people Paula M. Elliott, Hospice Nurse Paula Elliott is a nurse at St. Mary’s Hospice, and it is easy to tell that she is good at her job. She has a calming demeanor and mesmerizing, bright green eyes. She is the type of person whose age is impossible to guess, and she seems as if she would be good at making plants grow. She wears intricate wire jewelry that she made herself, and she tells a story about finding a sapphire almost as big as her palm while rock hunting with her eight-year-old son, Aiden. Paula truly believes in hospice. She eagerly expresses her fondness for her work with the conviction of one who knows she is doing the right thing. In addition to being a nurse, Paula is an artist, gardener, outdoor enthusiast, soccer lover and a former resident of Washington, D.C. Flagpole: How did you decide to work at hospice? Paula M. Elliott: I was working in general surgery and nephrology in Athens, and I had started participating in a palliative care team, and that’s when I first realized, “Oh, I really love this.” And then I just made a decision that I wanted to work for hospice.
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FP: What kind of things do you like to do when you’re not working? PME: Well, when I’m not working, I love wire art. I’m a wire artist… I make wire angels, and they’re really, really beautiful, and people love them. It makes them feel good because the angels are so delicate and pretty. And I love to go do gardening and go camping, bike riding. My most favorite thing to do is just enjoy my son and play with him and watch him grow. He’s just the love of my life. He’s amazing. I didn’t even know you could love something as much as you love your child, and once I had him, I was like, “Wow!”
Emily Patrick
FP: You said earlier that you’re from Washington, D.C. How did you wind up in Athens? PME: Well, my father and my mom did some research on the Internet, and they decided that they wanted to move in their retirement, and they chose Athens, Georgia. I love them, so it was very hard to be away, so I followed. It was a wonderful move. I miss the city, but the people in Georgia and this area are so polite. It’s not as stressful; there’s not as much traffic. FP: Before you moved to Athens, had you spent your whole life in Washington, D.C.? PME: Mm-hmm. Not right in Washington, D.C.— Fairfax… Arlington. Just 15 or 20 miles out of D.C. FP: Were you in D.C. on September 11th? PME: Oh, yeah. I lived right up the 395 corridor. When the plane hit the Pentagon, that was really scary—that’s one of the other reasons why I decided to move. When the plane blew up, when the explosions happened, [they] echoed throughout the city, and [they] actually—several miles down in Alexandria, Virginia where I was living at that time—shook our high-rise. And I just remember feeling the building shake, and I was watching what had happened in New York at that time and seeing some fighter jets going overhead, and people started running out of our building because we thought, at that time, that the whole area was getting blown up because the explosions were just echoing and shaking. It was really, really, really scary. And we actually drove down to the Pentagon that night—I hadn’t thought about the jet fuel and how that would be when you smell that and all—but we drove down there that night, and it was very eerie. There was no traffic. There was just lights shining on the building.
When I was still in nursing school, my grandmother was very ill, and we had chosen hospice. And I was scared to death. I didn’t know anything. They did such a wonderful job and helped my grandmother and my family to get through that, and that was the other thing that had always sparked—I wanted to be able to do for other people what someone had done for us. FP: Did seeing so much death bother you at first? PME: I wouldn’t call it bothered, exactly, but affected, yes. But there’s a couple of different ways you have to look at that. One is, I have to put things in a way that I can deal with them. I do feel very deeply when someone passes away, when they die. And I guess it does bother me, but at the same time, I can’t change what’s going to happen, and so many people are afraid to face and deal with that, the end of a person’s life. And the end of a person’s life is just as important as their birth. The way that I cope with it is that I know that our team helped them to control their pain and their suffering and their discomforts when they needed it the most, when they’re most afraid. There’s a lot of different hospices out there, and one of the things I love about St. Mary’s is the community outreach that
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we get to be involved with, too. Like there’s Camp Nokose… it’s a camp that the kids can come to when someone that they love has died, and the kids go through a grief workshop without even realizing it. It’s a wonderful experience.
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FP: So, your son has lived in Athens his whole life? PME: Yes, I moved here in 2002 and he was born in 2003. He’s a Georgia boy. FP: Is there anything you would change about Athens if you could? PME: Probably more coffee shops and more outdoor types of restaurants where you can sit out on the patios and stuff, a little closer towards Oconee. FP: Is that something you miss about D.C.? PME: Yeah. The city and the tall buildings and the museums. Like the Smithsonian Museum was right there, and I miss that. But, on the other hand, it’s forced me to find other [places]. For instance, I went to the natural history museum at UGA where they have the bug collection, and I never have seen anything like [it]… We’ve done different things that I wouldn’t have done if I was in D.C., like the train ride—the short line ride—where you go see Jimmy Carter’s farm… I don’t know if I would really change it because Athens is beautiful like it is, too… There’s one other thing I would change about Athens: I would have a women’s soccer team. Emily Patrick
JUNE 22, 2011 · FLAGPOLE.COM
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