Spring 2021 Donor Newsletter

hospicechesapeake.org

HOSPICE OF THE CHESAPEAKE FOUNDATION NEWSLETTER | SPRING 2021

Dear Friends,

Letter from our President

This time last year, we were just beginning to experience the impact of the novel coronavirus. Our emergency task force was grappling with monumental decisions that were needed to protect our patients, colleagues and volunteers while still providing the highest quality supportive, hospice and bereavement care available. These decisions would mean a tremendous change in protocols and behaviors.

Today, we are still striving to understand the impact those decisions have had on our team and those we care for every day. The story of the world in 2020 is a story that we will all share with the next generation.

Our stories are unique, and we will share those as well. Stories that include how pediatric families feeling scared and isolated by the pandemic were showered with hundreds of holiday presents because of your generosity. Stories about how you helped us virtually salute dying Veterans on patios and porches. How your donations enabled us to create a space at our inpatient care centers for patients in their �inal days to see their families. How your support funded educational videos and webinars by our counseling team who knew they had the expertise to guide a community experiencing a new kind of loss – the loss of normalcy and control.

We were changing and growing before the pandemic: It didn’t stop our momentum. As compared to 2019, we cared for 6 percent more hospice patients and 23 percent more supportive care patients in 2020. We ramped up and pivoted our programs to provide virtual grief support, virtual community education and virtual healing programs. I am in�initely proud of what our team, or family if you will, has been able to achieve at this moment in history.

We made a commitment to be there when you need us. We are so grateful that you are there when we need you, too.

With gratitude,

Michael J. Brady President & CEO

Letter from our Chief Medical Of�icer Dear Friends,

I know there is much attention and concern about the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine in our community. There is also much attention and concern about whether you should take it.

Here is what I am telling our team members, patients, and families: I strongly encourage you to accept the vaccine as soon as it becomes available to you. I recognize that this is a new vaccine and a very personal decision, but I believe it is the best option we have available to us at this time. The extraordinary effort to get these vaccines approved in record time backed by months of careful research should be applauded.

We are very fortunate all of our hospice team members have been offered the opportunity to receive the vaccine. By now, most have received their second doses. I was fortunate enough to have received both doses at Doctors Community Hospital.

• Why? I made my decision to receive the vaccine after much research and review. I decided to receive the vaccine for my wife and children, my patients and team members. I decided to receive the vaccine because I believe as healthcare professionals we serve as examples to our community and it is our duty to help ease the concerns of those around us. I chose to receive the vaccine because it is the right thing to do today to stem the tide of this terrible virus.

• How was it? Nothing more than a typical �lu shot, and I felt �ine following. It took a few weeks for my body to build the immunity it needs to �ight the virus, but I am doing my part and I encourage you to do yours as well.

We have created a video that goes into further detail about the vaccine. You can �ind “COVID Conversations with Dr. Eric Bush: 5 Things You Should Know About Vaccines” on our Vimeo channel at bit.ly/5ThingsaboutCOVIDvaccine.

I am thankful for this “shot of hope” and for all of the medical providers in our community who have included our team and patients in their vaccination program. We still have many months of coping with COVID-19 ahead of us, but those days are looking brighter and shorter as mass vaccination continues.

Gratefully, Eric Bush, MD, RPh, MBA Chief Medical Of�icer

Joy

is our everyday goal

It wasn’t a holiday. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday. It was a just a day in November. But when you have a child who is living with a life-limiting disease, every day is special.

So, when the Knighton family opened the door to Child Life Specialist Alex Haarich to receive a most amazing gift for pediatric hospice patient Malcolm, it accentuated the importance of making joy an everyday goal for our pediatric hospice patients and their families.

These joyful moments are two-fold, Haarich said. “First, the activity is a welcome break for the family, a much-deserved sense of normalcy where they put aside the doctor visits and symptom monitoring to laugh and share. Then, it provides a memory-making opportunity for the family to cherish after their child or sibling has passed.”

All are made possible by the generosity of individuals, organizations or businesses. That is the case for our The gift was a beautifully detailed Star Wars quilt from Days of Joy program, which is the Baltimore Constellation funded in large part thanks to Chapter of the Embroiderers the love of a little girl who died Guild of America. Each of its 12 too soon. Dave and Britta Ward decorative squares featured a To support the Chesapeake Kids founded Fight for Phoebe to hand embroidered image Program, please contact honor the memory of their inspired by the popular �ilm daughter, Phoebe Jeong-Hui franchise: Darth Vader, R2D2, foundation@hospicechesapeake.org Ward. Each year, on or around Yoda and others. Malcolm and or 443-837-1527.

Phoebe’s birthday, Dec. 7, the his brothers were thrilled. For organization raises money so parents Amanda and Russell, it that we can provide pediatric became something to hospice families with a remember Malcolm by. He died customized celebration. This year, through sales of face in December. masks, a restaurant fundraising night and online giving, the Wards donated $5,000.

This is an example of the Chesapeake Kids team’s daily efforts to bring the whim and happiness that helps every Haarich uses these funds to purchase all that is needed family thrive, even when one of its smallest members is for the celebration – decorations, cake, gifts and more. living with a debilitating illness. Haarich has a colorful She talks with the parents to decide on themes, colors array of activities and ideas at her disposal to help. From and the like. Prior to COVID-19 restrictions, Chesapeake personalized stuffed animals donated by Teddy Bear Kids team members would join in the celebration, which Mobile that can play back a recorded message to Joy Jars, could be for a graduation, birthday, last chemo visit, clear plastic containers �illed with fun activities. And even a half birthday. Until restrictions are lifted, Haarich then there are gifts crafted with love from the delivers all that they need to the family. It’s a party-to-go, community, like Malcolm’s Star Wars quilt. so to speak.

This leads to the program’s most notable joy-bringer, the Adopt-A-Family Holiday Sharing program. This year, 11 families received gift cards and around 300 wrapped presents thanks to the generosity of Hospice of the Chesapeake team members, their friends and the community. All were delivered by Haarich, who remarked that this year, she may need a bigger car.

Thanks to the generosity of Teddy Bear Mobile, pictured here at the 2018 Caring for the Continuum of Life Symposium, pediatric patients can stuff and customize their own stuffed animal that includes a device that can record their voice for siblings and parents to cherish.

The holiday program helped raise $11,000, which was a welcome surprise, as the pandemic has made an impact on funds raised for the Chesapeake Kids program. A total of $51,000 was raised in 2020 for our pediatric hospice and children’s bereavement programs. Director of Advancement and Volunteer Services Chris Wilson said that’s down considerably from 2019, mostly because signature fundraising events, speci�ically the annual Fashion for a Cause bene�iting Chesapeake Kids, had to be canceled. “We are hoping that people can see the impact of their gift in these joyful moments made possible by the Chesapeake Kids team and include us in their charitable giving plans. We have more than 20 families that depend on our wraparound pediatric hospice and bereavement care.”

Chief Advancement Officer Shauna Chabot helps donor Leslie Carson hold up the Star Wars themed quilt crafted by members of her guild, the Baltimore Constellation Chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild of America.

Pictured with the Star Wars quilt are, from left, Iain, Simon, Duncan, and Malcolm Knighton.

Though the last thing we would want to do is give COVID-19 credit for anything good, we do have to acknowledge that it has contributed to a new way of caring for the community. Many of these changes we know we want to keep.

That includes not only hospice and supportive care, but also bereavement care. Thanks to telehealth, Chesapeake Life Center has continued to be present for grievers during the pandemic. Much of that support for individuals, families and groups has been through a telehealth platform. In recent months some of it has been in-person, though in groups of six grievers or less and following strict health guidelines for the protection of all involved.

At the top of that list is telehealth. When the �irst pandemic restrictions were imposed, we turned to our information services team who To support our COVID-19 moved quickly to provide the Our Business Development Relief Fund, please contact and Community Education technology we needed to stay connected. In many cases, teams can attest that before foundation@hospicechesapeake.org COVID, we educated the unable to visit our patients in assisted living and skilled clinical teams at such care or 443-837-1527. partners as assisted living nursing facilities, medical centers and individual’s centers and hospitals by offering in-person presentations. This was also the homes, our care teams were able to virtually visit patients and families. Care team members who could provide primary way we reached out to the community. in-person care with the appropriate PPE were able to use Just as lockdowns were beginning in March 2020, this technology to keep their patients connected with Community Education Manager Tammy Turner had their loved ones. already begun creating “Coping with COVID” videos.

“If there is any silver lining it has helped us increase the Working with our clinical experts and with funding from implementation of telehealth technology,” Chief Medical the John & Cathy Belcher Institute, she spent the last year Of�icer Dr. Eric Bush said. As we worked to stay connected building a video library of more than 50 videos that with the community and those people aging in place, the includes continuing education offerings shared with technology allowed us to reach an even greater number of professionals at our partner facilities and in the people. “It has really increased the demand for all that we community, hundreds of school counselors throughout do,” he said.

Maryland and on social media for everyone in the community. Some of these videos started as live webinars that we have banked for continued use. The number of people who have attended these virtual presentations far exceed the 10 to 20 people who would frequent our library presentations.

Though our volunteers would want nothing more than to be able to be visit patients and families in person, the numbers support keeping phone calls and virtual support in the Volunteer Services Team’s toolbox in some capacity after COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted. Our volunteer Caring Callers made around 7,900 calls from April through December. We were able to more than double our annual record for performing Honor Salutes, having completed 280 virtual and socially distanced in-person salutes in 2020. Last year, our integrative arts videos featuring yoga, meditation, therapeutic music and more supported 280 families.

As we turn the corner into 2021, we talk about going back. Truthfully however, things will never be exactly the same. And that is a good thing, Chesapeake Life Center Director Susan Coale said.

“It’s not going to be what it used to be. We’ve developed creative new programs. We’ve expanded our offerings and the way we communicate,” she said. “We are never going to want to be all virtual. But there will be a greater variety of options available than there were before COVID. As we move through grief, we grow. We learn new things. And so our team is doing that, too.”

The silver lining in the dark cloud is that all our teams are growing from the new things we have learned. When the storm clears, the rainbow will shine over how we became better by weathering the storm together.

RIGHT: These are a few of the more than 50 educational videos we have produced to continue our community outreach efforts, even through COVID-19.

ANNE ARUNDEL COUNTY Reflections on a Guiding Star: Dr. Hilary O’Herlihy

By Sandra Dillon, Director of Communications

Dr. Hilary O’Herlihy

Last year, we experienced the signi�icant loss of one person who has been a constant for this organization for more than 40 years. Dr. Hilary O’Herlihy passed in November.

Though so many of our traditions have been interrupted by this deadly virus, we refuse to allow the tradition of honoring one so valued to pass as well.

Born in Cork, Ireland, in 1930, he graduated from University College in Cork in 1954 and then accepted an internship at St. Mary's Hospital in Philadelphia. He booked passage on a steamship headed for America. He liked to say that there was no better life than in the USA, and particularly in Maryland.

After arriving, he fell in love with a young nurse named Martha Clauss and they married in 1956. She continued to be the love of his life for over six decades. Quite the accomplished physician, Dr. O’Herlihy was a board-certi�ied cardiologist and served as Chief of Medicine for 36 years at the former North Arundel Hospital, now University of Maryland Baltimore Washington Medical Center, where the cardiology wing is named in his honor.

As the story goes, the O’Herlihys were among those �irst volunteers who created and willed into reality the organization that we know today as Hospice of the Chesapeake. They faithfully served on our board of directors in many capacities for over four decades. Over the years, we have looked to them both for af�irmation and validation that the path we have laid is in keeping with their original vision for hospice care.

Many of us knew Hilary and Martha well and learned from them in so many ways. We learned when Martha spoke quietly to lean in and listen carefully. We learned that when Hilary spoke you were likely to hear a joke — his sense of humor was legendary.

Martha and Hilary have been steadfast supporters of this organization since its inception with grace and dignity all while keeping a close eye on our evolution and progress.

We are incredibly grateful for their loving guidance and gentle steering.

We greatly miss our Dr. O’Herlihy. His absence will be felt throughout our organization for generations, but we believe he helped set us on a path that will allow us to live our mission for the next 40 years and beyond.

Thank you, Hilary!

Martha O’Herlihy and Dr. Hilary O’Herlihy, volunteer leaders who were part of a group that founded Hospice of the Chesapeake more than 40 years ago.

CHARLES COUNTY Grief support has turned into a passion for Hayley Bacon If there is any illustration of how fundraising plays an important role in bereavement care, it can be found in Bereavement Counselor Hayley Bacon’s gleeful response to the question, what are some of the resources that can help you do your job better?

“It’s nice to have a team to bounce ideas off of,” she said, referring to the Chesapeake Life Center social workers and counselors. “Now, being able to say ‘Hey, I really want to try this art therapy or writing program,’ the fact that we have the funding to get the resources and also the training I need to better help our clients, it makes a world of difference,” Bacon said.

Having Bacon on the Chesapeake Life Center team has also made a world of difference for our grief programs. As the sole bereavement counselor on the Charles County team, she plays a critical role in helping the Chesapeake Life Center team better understand the grief support needs of the community she serves.

“Hayley’s energy and enthusiasm are terri�ic. She offers a new perspective and everyone on the team bene�its from the exchange of ideas,” Chesapeake Life Center Director Susan Coale said. “We are honored to be able to support her in expanding children’s services in Charles County.”

Hayley Bacon, LCSW-C

One of the great ideas coming from the team was creating videos to help people cope with the isolation and anxiety that comes with the restrictions of the pandemic. Bacon created “A Minute for Myself,” four brief videos that offer self-care strategies to address one’s mental and spiritual health. They can be found in this Youtube playlist: bit.ly/MinuteForMyself.

She confesses that she loves giving presentations, so recording the videos came naturally. And she knew it was important to create resources to give people coping with loss a way to ground themselves that they can do anytime, anywhere and on their own.

When she was hired as a social worker at Charles County three years ago, Bacon had the choice between becoming a social worker on the hospice team or the bereavement coordinator. She chose the latter, and it has changed her life. “I love grief support,” Bacon said. “It turned into a passion.”

To support grief programs in Charles County, please contact foundation@hospicechesapeake.org or 443-837-1527.

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY Virtual visits can still be creative with SoulCollage In our Spring 2018 Caring for Life Newsletter, we shared a story about SoulCollage, a group that has participants create a series of collages to commemorate lost loved ones and to visually journal the grief process. Its facilitator, Bereavement Program Coordinator Roberta Rook, MA, LCPC, has been leading the sessions in various Prince George’s County locations since Chesapeake Life Center began offering the monthly group in 2006, most recently out of our Largo of�ice.

Part of the therapy has the group use clippings from magazines and other printed images to create collages that express a feeling, memory or other snippet from their soul. The last part of the session has the group sharing and discussing their creations with each other. When COVID-19 restrictions �irst happened and the center was forced to suspend its support Roberta Rook, MA, LCPC group programming, it was hard to imagine how this group could meet if not in-person.

For Rook, it was more dif�icult to imagine this group not meeting at all. It has been a constant not only in her professional career, but more importantly for its participants. So, with a bit of planning and patience, the group began meeting virtually in early fall. Three years after that center spread article, we sat in on one of these virtual meetings.

One participant has never been to an in-person SoulCollage. As a resident of Harford County she said only because it is virtual is she able to attend. After her son’s death, she had tried other grief support groups, but felt they were too focused on the negative. “With SoulCollage, I found people I can be positive with,” she said.

Of course, there are notable differences. The participants have homework to do in preparation as their collage is created before they log into the meeting instead of during the �irst part of the session. Participant Phyllis Windle misses that part of the in-person experience. “That was a good time for us to talk and catch up,” she said. Plus, she also misses having access to Rook’s substantial library of magazines for clippings. On this particular evening though, the �irst winter storm of the year was blowing outside her window. “I miss being in person, but on a snow day, it’s good that we can still meet,” Windle said.

To participate in SoulCollage, call 1-888-501-7077 or email griefinfo@chesapeakelifecenter.org. To support grief programs in Prince George’s County, please contact foundation@hospicechesapeake.org or 443-837-1527.

Though it was 15 years ago, Terri Saus remembers the compassionate care her father Carson W. Broyles received when he was with Hospice of the Chesapeake. His care lasted less than a week, yet the outpouring of services impressed Terri and her husband Frank. So, when it came time to plan their estate, they remembered Hospice of the Chesapeake.

Frank and Terri Saus

Soon after her father’s passing, the couple established an endowment in his name to support maintenance of the �lower gardens at the Rebecca Fortney Inpatient Care Center, as well as a patient patio overlooking the colorful �lower beds and shrubs. “We wanted to create a living memorial – a place of peace,” Terri said. The gift became even more personal a few years later when a dear friend entered hospice. Just by chance, he stayed in the room with the patio dedicated to her father. The connection solidi�ied the couple’s decision to memorialize her father by helping others.

As they continued building on their endowment with an annual donation, Terri and Frank also included a bequest intention to bene�it Hospice of the Chesapeake in their estate plans. Their bequest is a convenient way to provide support with a future donation.

“I always thought you had to be a multi-millionaire to leave a gift in your will or set up an endowment,” Terri said. “In reality, all you need is to care about a cause and want to ensure the work continues.

Through our gift planning, the memory of my father will live on.”

In addition to caring for loved ones, your will can support organizations and causes you care about most. A gift in your will costs nothing now and gives you the satisfaction of knowing you have helped patients and loved ones at Hospice of the Chesapeake in the future.

Contact Liz Schuman at 443-758-7280 or eschuman@hospicechesapeake.org to learn more.

Irises bloom in the Veterans Memorial Garden on the grounds of the Rebecca Fortney Inpatient Care Center.

THE GIFT OF HOPE

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

–Edward Kennedy

Support Our Hospice Heroes Give dignity and compassion for patients at end of life.

Offer comfort to loved ones who grieve.

Build a caring community.

Your care is needed now, more than ever, during COVID-19 and beyond.

Learn more about individual gifts, monthly giving, bequests, sponsorships, and other ways to make a difference in the lives of others.

Visit hospicechesapeake.org/giving.

Call 443.837.3385 to give by phone or to learn more.

Thanks to you, so much hospicechesapeake.org is possible for patients, families, and our community. hospicechesapeake.org