Angelus News | July 19-26, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 26

“These are all the stats right here.”
“Blood pressure kind of low,” muttered the nurse as he
studied the pages.
Gwen nodded: “His pulse is getting weak, right?”
“It’s still kind of bad, but not as bad as it has been, because
the blood pressure is getting low.”
Then the 71-year-old woman ticked off the medications
she had been giving her husband overnight and early this
morning.
“That’s fine,” he answered.
Thirteen years ago, Ronald had a massive stroke, leaving
his left side paralyzed. The episode was followed by a
number of medical problems. Lately, he had been in the
hospital, where he was on a ventilator with a feeding tube
up his nose. But he yanked out the feeding tube, telling
his wife he didn’t want any more extraordinary measures to
prolong his life.
When no facility would take him after his stay in the
cases like the Lavery’s, the patient’s own home.
In his past life, Doyle was a geologist, working on
environmental investigations of soil and groundwater
contamination. While working in Wyoming, he broke
a leg from slipping on ice, which resulted in a hiatus
from his on-the-go lifestyle as he recovered at his home in
Colorado.
During that time, he recalled mostly thinking about one
thing: Was he really making a difference in others’ lives or
mostly just focusing on himself and his family?
That period marked a turning point in his life.
One day while reading the “Denver Catholic,” the local
archdiocesan newspaper, the then-38-year-old came across
a call for volunteers for a local hospice run by the Archdiocese
of Denver. “The moment I saw it, I was like ‘That’s
it! That’s what I’m going to do,’ ” he remembered. “I just
had this feeling, even though I didn’t really know hospice
Opposite and above: Providence TrinityCare case manager Tom Doyle and a nurse attend to Javier Ricardo Uribe at his Calabasas home.
hospital because of his tracheostomy, Gwen reluctantly
brought her husband home to die. But she didn’t really
know how to provide the intense medical care he needed.
And she remembered the doctors at the hospital saying
something about hospice care.
“I had no idea,” she told Angelus News during an interview
at her home. “I thought hospice was a place to go
to, because they said to me he refused all treatment, and
he won’t allow them to put another feeding tube in his
stomach. But he’d had enough. He’s in pain. So I thought,
‘How am I going to take care of him?’ ”
Enter Providence TrinityCare Hospice, a service of the
Catholic not-for-profit Providence health care network.
Founded in 1977, the program offers end-of-life hospice
care for patients and their families or other caretakers.
Today it’s grown to five clinical teams with a staff of more
than 180 professionals in Southern California working in
hospitals, nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities — and in
R.W. DELLINGER
at that point.”
Doyle began as a volunteer, but grew so concerned by
the way some older persons in nursing homes were treated
that he became an ombudsman on behalf of residents.
Later, he went back to college, becoming a registered
nurse thanks to an accelerated program at California State
University Northridge.
Today, the 59-year-old has seven years of hospice work
under his belt, including the last 5 1/2 at Providence
TrinityCare doing outreach with a team that includes a
social worker, a chaplain, other nurses, and on-call doctors
working mainly in the San Fernando Valley.
“Everything that we do is focused on the comfort of the
patient,” explained Doyle.
“Usually, you can’t totally eliminate pain. That would require
total sedation, giving the patient enough medication
that the person is sleeping all the time. And most patients
don’t want that. They want the pain managed, and they get
R.W. DELLINGER
July 19-26, 2019 • ANGELUS • 15