Hospice care extolled during CHP event

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Community Health Professionals held its annual dinner and auction fundraiser Thursday at Willow Bend Country Club, with the family of the late Luanne Metzger presenting the Beacon of Hope lighthouse this year.

Metzger, who retired at age 64 after 34 years of service at Eaton Corporation in Van Wert, suffered from a brain tumor that eventually led to her eventually receiving hospice care.

In the year following Metzger’s diagnosis, daughter Becky Holdgreve, with support from her family, including husband Tyler and children Lilly and Lyla, provided care for her mother, who was unable to drive and became increasingly forgetful due to the advancing brain tumor.

But as caretaker for her mother, Holdgreve temporarily lost her identity as Metzger’s daughter, sublimating her own wishes to care for her mother. That lasted until Metzger came under the care of Community Health Professionals hospice workers.

“That was the day I got my mother back,” Holdgreve said. “They took over my mother’s detailed care and I was able to spend time with her as a daughter again.”

Family members all spoke of the benefit of hospice care in helping them deal with the impending loss of Metzger, known as Grandma Lulu to her grandchildren, as well as the ability to spend quality time with her before she passed on.

Cindy Sinning, CHP hospital nursing supervisor, became a nurse following the birth of her second child, who was born with a heart condition in the late 1990s.

“At that time, I knew I wanted to become a nurse,” Sinning said, although it wasn’t until 2001 after her youngest child was born, that she fulfilled that desire and began her nursing study. She received her RN degree in 2005 from Rhodes State College and became a critical care nurse at St. Rita’s Medical Center in Lima, while also teaching a nursing course at Rhodes State.

She became a hospice care nurse in 2009, following the untimely death in 2008 of her brother, Brian Baker, of colon cancer at the age 40, and is passionate about the benefits of hospice to families and those stricken with a terminal illness.

Sinning said she became personally involved in hospice when her mother died, noting that hospice workers who took care of her mother were “angels” and made her want to do more in that area.

“I wanted to be that educator, that teacher, that supporter,” Sinning said. “I wanted to take care of patients and families; I wanted to be that nurse who took care of mine.” 

Sinning noted that, while hospice is available to patients given a diagnosis of terminal illness — a medical determination that they have less than six months left to live — those in hospice care often live longer than that — sometimes far longer. Sinning said CHP recently had a patient that lived four years while in hospice.

In the past decade as a hospice nurse, Sinning has taken care of a lot of hospital patients and said they also become part of her family. She echoed what Holdgreve said earlier in the evening about getting her mother back after hospice took over her mother’s care. 

“When you have to become the caregiver, you can’t just be the daughter,” Sinning explained. “Becky had to take care of her mom, and she had to be caregiver, she had to dress, and bathe, and feed her,” Sinning said. “Until hospice steps in you can’t just be a daughter.”

Sinning also had kind words for Metzger, who she got to know well while helping care for her.

“Luanne was a wonderful lady, she always had a smile on her face, she cared about everyone else and not herself,” Sinning said. “She always welcomed our staff in her home; she loved her family.”

Following the dinner and lighthouse presentation, CHP Board member Dave Roach and local realtor-auctioneer Bob Gamble took over to auction off items to raise money for CHP’s hospice care program.