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Tag: social worker stories

Stubborn Ghosts

Scott Janssen October 8, 2024 11 Comments

It’s a sunny day, and I’m slowly pacing along the memorial brick path that winds through an untended garden in a vacant healthcare complex.

Scanning the bricks, I stop in my tracks when I spot Mary’s name.

I’ve arrived here early to meet my friend, Tom, with whom I worked years ago when these grounds, in Hillsborough, NC, were home to a busy hospice inpatient facility. In its bereavement offices, counselors like us provided a space for those who were grieving to express their pain and begin to heal.

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Shooter

Scott Janssen September 8, 2023 2 Comments

Monday, August 28, 1:15 pm
Chapel Hill, NC

“Remain inside the building until further notice.”

The security alert on my phone screen is terse. Part of me is annoyed by its tone—long on commands, short on details. Sitting safely in my car after visiting a hospice patient, twenty miles from UNC’s hospital and university in Chapel Hill, I ignore the text, chalking it up to an overreaction by the security department.

The next alert, twenty minutes later, gets my attention. There’s an “armed and dangerous” intruder on campus.

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Black and White

Scott Janssen January 18, 2022 15 Comments

Joe, a young Black man, has fire in his eyes as he storms down the apartment building’s front steps and into the night. It’s around 10:00 pm, and you can tell he means business as he heads across the parking lot toward a group of rough-looking white guys who are drinking beer and playing loud music.

I’m on the front porch talking with the minister as we wait for the funeral home to arrive to remove Joe’s mother’s body. Sensing something bad is about to happen, I take off after him.

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A Time to Mend

Scott Janssen August 27, 2021 11 Comments

“After eighty-five years of life, I still don’t know what death is,” said Lonnie, as I sat beside her bed in the nursing home. “I just know it scares the heck out of me.”

Despite decades as a hospice social worker, I don’t know what death is either; but I’ve spent much time with patients exploring the question together.

“What scares you?” I asked.

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Ghosts

Scott Janssen October 23, 2020 59 Comments

For months, as I’ve visited Evan as his hospice social worker, he’s been praying to die. In his early nineties, he has been dealing with colorectal cancer for more than four years, and he’s flat tired out. As he sees it, the long days of illness have turned his life into a tedious, meaningless dirge with nothing to look forward to other than its end. He’s done, finished. He often talks about killing himself.

On this visit, though, his depression seems to have lifted. He’s engaged and upbeat–and this sudden about-face arouses my suspicions: Has he decided to do it? Is he planning a way out?

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Tucking Him In

Peggy Murphy March 15, 2019 7 Comments
Peggy Murphy ~

I need to see Justin before my workday commences. I’m a social worker at the outpatient cancer center where Justin has been treated for an aggressive colon cancer.

Seeing him today means visiting him in the hospital, up the road from the center.

It’s almost surreal.

When I first met Justin, nearly two years ago, he looked every bit the linebacker–well over six feet tall, with a girth to match. A man in his late fifties, he had a booming voice and an engaging personality. He was married, a successful wining-and-dining stockbroker, active in his town and in the local Italian American Society.

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A Soldier’s Tale

Scott Janssen March 8, 2019 2 Comments
Scott Janssen ~

“You ever work with vets?” asks the young man sitting across from me in the hospital waiting room.

He’s been sitting there all morning. So have I. Since 5:30 am, my father-in-law, age eighty-eight, has been undergoing surgery to remove a tumor in his lung. The surgeons just sent word that they’ve finished, and my wife and her mother have gone to the post-op room to see him.

Waiting for them to return, my wife’s sister and I have been talking about her son, who’s thinking of joining the Air Force.

“Warn him about the recruiters and their shiny promises,” I say. “Tell him they’re all a bunch of liars.”

“That’s for damn sure,” the man says.

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Fear No Evil

Scott Janssen January 12, 2018 11 Comments

Scott Janssen ~

“You need to get here now!” The nurse whispers anxiously. It’s after midnight. One of our hospice patients has just died at home, and her husband is threatening to shoot himself when the funeral home shows up.

“Has the funeral home been called?” I ask.

“No.”

“Does he have a gun or weapon?”

“We’re out in the country. There are deer heads on the wall.”

I try not to stereotype, but deer heads are a giveaway. There are probably lots of guns.

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Epilogue

Sara Bybee December 29, 2017 6 Comments

Sara Bybee ~

It’s 2:02 pm when my pager beeps. I pull it out and read: “Juan may have just passed. Going in now.”

As a social worker in the region’s only cancer specialty hospital, I provide emotional support for patients and their families–including talking about their wishes for end-of-life care.

Juan is a sixty-five-year-old Ecuadorian man with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I’ve known him for about a year. Polite and easy to talk to, he often listens to Spanish sermons as he walks through the halls, IV pole at his side.

Over the months, we’ve grown close. He’s told me about his life in Ecuador, his first job (delivering pizza) and how proud he is of his children. I’ve met

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