Two Years Already?

It seems like I was just making posts last week about how I've been doing massage for hospice clients for a year, and now it's almost to the two year mark.

I expected this job to be more than a job in a lot of ways. When you sign up to bring comfort to the dying, you think to yourself "This is going be a an amazing, scary, fullfilling, life changing job". You pat yourself on the back for having the cahoonies to take the job in the first place. You feel good about the recognition you recieve from your peers, friends, and community. In a lot of ways the job is like how I expected to be. Some of the most common things I hear are "I could never do this", "It's so great that YOU are doing this for people who really need this", etc...

It didn't go to my head too much though, because I still had my mother, who is a hospice nurse, to give me some doses of reality. My sister said something to the effect "This is the last job I would expect YOU to take" and she was right, this position was a bit of stretch for my personality. The reality of the position, is while you are helping people while on visits, the times you are in the office are very much like any other job. There are co workers who don't shut up while you are trying to document your visits, nurses who still don't write a referral for MT correctly, state inspectors you have to perform for, and paperwork that boggles the mind.

The funny thing is, I have a much less glamorous job as a Chiropractic Assistant that seems less like a job than this one does. That was not what I expected when I signed up to "change peoples lives"

I've come to conclusion that this is a very worthwhile, fulfilling, giving thing to do as a massage therapist. It is definetely something that we need to see more of in hospice programs across the nation. When I graduated from massage school, I was asked to give the speech for my class during the ceremony. I gave a nervous speech on Passion for what we do... I felt that passion that day and I feel it for my private practice, but I don't feel it doing thing work for hospice anymore. People in hospice deserve that passion. I see it in the nurses and aides that work with them, I see it in the clergy and social worker that visit them, but I don't feel it in me and I think that is wrong.

I am thinking about leaving hospice, but I want the person who replaces me to be committed and passionate about what they are taking on. This has been a difficult realization for me to accept. It's nice to be thought of as an amazing person for working with dying people, but that's not the reason to do it.

I imagine it will take me several months to go through with this in the end. There are logistics and of course the aformentioned 'cahoonies' to give up in the middle of something that is going so well for the other people involved.