This is Hospice Care: Meet Jack
Today, we’re introducing you to Jack and his family, who have been receiving care and support from Primrose Hospice & Family Support Centre for around two years.
Jack, his wife Amara, and their two young daughters first came to Primrose after Amara was diagnosed with incurable cancer.
Jack shared: “I needed support from Primrose so that I could support my wife and my children, because I wasn’t able to be there as much as a father, since a lot of my energy was focused on supporting my wife.
So that’s where Primrose really came to the rescue during that latter year, our children, who at four and five years old, weren’t really able to make a lot of sense of what was going on. The Primrose team offered children’s activities for them to take part in and to build those bonds early, so that when things did get difficult, those bonds would help support them.”
Amara was supported across our services, including physiotherapy, helping with her physical and mental health and she also attended the Primrose Gals group where she was able to talk and share with others who were also living with life-limiting illnesses.
“I’d describe the hospice care from Primrose as the kind of support a person truly needs when they’re living with an illness like terminal cancer. There are peaks and challenges where, if it were just NHS care, there are only certain areas they can meet – which can make the road feel quite bumpy.
But hospice care helps to smooth that road. It fills in the gaps and supports all the areas that aren’t necessarily covered within the NHS.”
Jack’s daughters, Chloe and Nina, took part in our children’s groups, where they were able to make friends with other young people in similar situations. Our Children’s Team helped them understand what both their mum and dad were going through, and supported them as they prepared for the future.
As Amara became more poorly, she was no longer able to attend Primrose Hospice herself, but our Family Support Team continued to provide vital care for the whole family – and still do today.
“There were some parts where, as a parent, you have no idea how to approach the situation and probably the starkest example of that for me was on the day she died. Amara died in the afternoon at home. Her breathing began to change over the course of an hour, by the end of which she had passed away, I was alone with her throughout and I gently held her up to till her last breath.
My Mother had gone to collect the children from school, so I phoned her to ask her to hold back on bringing the girls home. I had no idea what to do in that situation, so I phoned the children’s team and they encouraged me to ask the children what they wanted to do, and at the time, they wanted to see her.
They had become quite used to seeing her in a hospital bed by this point, so they came home, and wrote some cards which they laid on her. There was a part of me that knew in the future they may need so it, there’s a photo of them resting the cards on her. Amara looks really peaceful, and it’s an incredibly sad but also a beautiful photo in our own personal way. If it hadn’t been for Primrose I don’t think that moment would have materialised.
For me, it was amazing at that point to have a contact at Primrose Hospice from the Children’s team who could give me the advice I needed.”
Somewhere in your life – in your family, your friendships, your community – hospice care is already making a difference to another family like Jack’s. Throughout their journey our adult family support team provided vital counselling for Jack to help him cope.
“The best thing I ever did was take up the grief counselling services, because you will have that initial groundswell of support in the immediate aftermath, and that will carry up until the funeral and some time after but the reality is everyone has their own lives to go back to, yet you’re still within the grip of grief, and you will need someone to continue to share that grief with.
Someone who is able to help you process that grief and that was hugely important for me. I was able to continue to function for myself and the girls, knowing that I had a date coming up, where I could be in a safe space with someone that I trusted, where I could release everything that I built up prior. That is really important, because if you don’t release it in that safe space, it will release on its own in other ways that may not be constructive for your family.
One thing people need to understand about hospices is that the culture is built on brightness, friendliness, love, warmth and compassion.
If you ever get the chance to support Primrose Hospice, please do — it will change your perception, and you’ll be grateful you did. There are so many families out there, like ours, who desperately needed these services at a critical time during an incredibly challenging journey.”
Our team were there for Jack and his family when they needed us most – but this wouldn’t have been possible without the kindness and support of our community.
Did you know it costs over £1,000 per day to run our family support services? Today we’re asking you to consider leaving a gift of any size in your will to Primrose Hospice.
Together with your support, we can protect the future of hospice care.
Help it live on for all, for now, forever.
*https://childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk/about/media-centre/evidence/key-statistics
