Managing Illness
The importance of palliative care
BY TRISH ROBERTS HATLER
Grief changes us. It is sneaky, cruelly disappearing for half a second when you wake up and reality is jumbled, before you remember that EVERY SINGLE THING has changed. That grief is the price and privilege of loving hard.
Dr. Nick Kouns loves hard and has lived grief. His love for his mother in her final days was its own language, memorialized in stories he shared over the years, in the way he cared for her during her illness, and, characteristically, in the way he has honored her with his life choices.
“When I found out my mother was dying,” he says, “I had been a doctor for 22 years. I was working as a hospice medical director at that time, in addition to taking care of patients admitted into the hospital. I was working the day my sister called me to share the news, and it still haunts me to this day.
”She taught me to value life and love above all things and she taught me to give until it hurts a little bit. —Nick Kouns, remembering his mother, Anna Rose Kouns
”The summer she died, he recalls, “I remember a robin had made a nest in one of the beautiful ferns she used to hang on her front porch. We used to sit out on the swing and quietly watch her build her nest as the hours, days, and weeks slipped by. Four eggs turned into four baby robins and I think momma and I were both lifted-up by watching life go on around us even as her life spilled out before us.”
“When my mother died, I felt something I had honestly never felt before—I felt alone. And then something happened. I found myself with the opportunity to open a Palliative Care program in my hometown hospital. I found a way to sublimate my grief. I moved forward with a singular purpose—help create something as a personal legacy to my mother, who had taught me everything good in the world. She taught me about kindness. She taught me about unconditional love. She cultivated in me a sense of humanity and tenderness. She taught me to value life and love above all things and she taught me to give until it hurts a little bit.”
The palliative care service line opened (A.I.M.S., Advanced Illness Management Services) and went on to be published in a leading national medical journal as a best practice in how to take care of the sickest and most vulnerable patients in our communities.
Kouns adds, “I went on to become a Professor of Palliative Care and, to this day, have the great fortune of teaching medical students from across the state of Kentucky. In addition to the science, I also teach them about kindness. I try to teach them about tenderness and mindfulness—to remind them that medicine is not just about lab values and clinical data.
This article is featured on page 28 of the 2020 Senior Living Lexington Guide
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