Chris was diagnosis with a Brain Tumour. Lynne his wife has spoken to us about the care they received from the hospice to help with his pain management, end of life care and bereavement counselling.

Chris was unwell for about 6 months, on Boxing Day I was working when I got a call, they thought he was having a heart attack. This went on for months, they even thought It was mental health problems. I was getting really worries and took him to the A&E, within 1 hour they told us he had a brain tumour and the prognosis was not good. After this, he had to go for surgical debulking, Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy.

He was in a lot of pain, and it was very hard to manage, his whole personality changed. I didn’t know who he was any more, which was really hard, especially as we had a son who was only 11. We had a Macmillan Nurse who used to visit, and they suggested the hospice to help manage his pain and symptoms.

I felt like I walked into the hospice with this backpack full of all this problems, but within an hour it was all gone.

They were amazing. They managed to get his pain under control within 2 days, they sorted equipment out for our house for when he did come home, and they just treated us all holistically as a family. He stayed for 2 weeks and then came back home and visited the Wellbeing Centre at the hospice twice a week, which he loved and gave me a break.

People have this misconception that it’s a place to come to die, it’s not. He came in for pain management. They sorted out a lot of our socials problems, gave me and my son some support to cope with things.

He started to deteriorate, so came back to the hospice till he died. I knew the hospice was brilliant care, but it went far and beyond anything I would have expected. The hospice meant he got to have a dignified death.

After he died, I came to the hospice for bereavement counselling, I would have never gotten through it without them. It was valuable for me to be able to move on.

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