Hometown girl finds her place in hospice work
Hometown girl finds her place in hospice work
MOSES LAKE — Perhaps for most high school graduates born and raised in a small town, their first inclination upon graduation is to leave.
The same was true for Jamie Vanerstrom, a Moses Lake native who graduated from Moses Lake High School in 1994.
After attending Big Bend Community College, Vanerstrom enrolled at Eastern Washington University, later studying at a college in Walla Walla where she earned her masters degree in child therapy. For a short time she also moved to Spokane where she worked as a barrista.
Nearly 12 years after graduating from high school, Vanerstrom is back in her hometown with her husband and two sons, working as a hospice director at Central Basin Home Health and Hospice in Moses Lake, a job she never would have imagined she would be doing.
"I started with kids and ended up with the end," Vanerstrom said of her career change. "The more I got into it, the more I really found that it just fit for me."
It has been four years since Vanerstrom began working part time with hospice.
The part-time position was one she applied for so she could work and spend time with her newborn son Chase, now 4 years old.
As changes in employees at hospice opened up positions and her son got older, Vanerstrom moved up to the position of hospice director.
For many people, the thought of working in a field where issues surrounding death and dying are a typical part of any work day is an unsettling thought.
But Vanerstrom is comfortable with the duties of her job and describes the role of hospice as being a support network for families whose loved ones are terminally ill, having six months or less to live.
"For the most part it's not the patients asking am I dying, it's the families saying please don't tell them that they're dying or are they really gonna die, when are they gonna die, how long do we have," she said. " … People answer their own questions, they just need the reassurance to listen to what their body's telling them."
The first time Vanerstrom went out to visit a terminally ill patient and their family, she admits being anything but comfortable about her job.
"I was asking her all kinds of questions about what if they ask me this, what am I gonna say if they ask me if I'm dying?" she said of the questions she asked the social worker who accompanied her on her first visit with a client. "I didn't know how to answer that."
Vanerstrom has also provided services to children with terminally ill diseases.
The children who come to hospice for services are just as inquisitive or more than the adult patients Vanerstrom serves.
"For the most part children just have a lot of questions about what's gonna happen and what are they going to look like and where are they gonna go and how are they gonna get to heaven," she said.
Being a mother of two young boys now, her youngest age 11 months, Vanerstrom finds the uniqueness of her job a topic of interest to her own children.
Vanerstrom explains her job to her sons by relating it to her role as a mother.
"I tell him that mommy takes care of sick people and that sick people need my help and they're at home with their families, and when he's sick I'm with him and that makes him feel better," she said. "They feel the anxiety that the adults are feeling about talking to them about it."
Vanerstrom says there is a definite need for terminally ill patients to have someone help them through the dying process.
Giving reassurance of what is happening to the body, when and how are all a part of what Vanerstrom does when talking to patients and their family about what to expect.
Since the Terri Schiavo case last year, in which a feeding tube was removed from the brain-damaged Florida woman, public interest in planning for family deaths has increased at Vanerstrom's office.
People are wanting to know more about writing wills and making clear plans in the event something should happen to them, Vanerstrom said.
Vanerstrom is also serving more patients, about 20 now which is up from fewer than 10 when she started.
For a job that was not a childhood dream of Vanerstrom's or one she ever envisioned herself doing, she is at home in her hometown.
"If I know that I have helped somebody even just a little bit … if all I did that day was give them all the information and resources they needed to make it a little bit easier for them, then I've done my job," she said.
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