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• Dying with dignity

Dying with dignity
Alumna aids in service of terminally ill

Amid the buzz of student activity, there exists a subtle peace at 1120 Woodlawn Ave. It is a place where life can end.

The Life Abundant House, a project of the Life Abundant Foundation (LAF) of Urbana, Ohio, provides a home for terminally ill patients to continue Hospice care in a secure and comfortable environment where guests can maintain a sense of self by bringing some belongings from home.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand, or even think about, terminal illness until they are confronted with it,” said Gail Heath ’98, executive director. “We’re interested in serving people who are by themselves.”

Heath is not new to the idea of improving quality care for the elderly.

She focused her sociology thesis at Wittenberg on self-esteem and self-worth in the elderly to “de-institutionalize the care of the elderly and find what kinds of things would make a nursing home better.

I felt that no matter how good of a job they did, it still wasn’t the person’s home; it still wasn’t the attention you’d get from a family.”

The Life Abundant House provides 24-hour, non-medical, safe, supporting care for Hospice-approved “people who don’t have adequate housing, do not have family to be adequate caregivers, or cannot afford 24-hour service.”

“We help the person who is falling through the cracks. It’s completely situational,” Heath said. “If you think about it, anyone who is living alone could be in this kind of situation,” she added.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be an old person; cancer can affect anyone. This is only going to become more and more of a problem. There is a definite rising need for this kind of home-based care.”

In 1995 Grant Ingersoll, a Hospice chaplain at Mercy Hospital, saw the need for caregivers and began the organization with “like-minded, concerned Christians to ensure Hospice support group for all, or as many as possible,” residents of Clark, Champaign and Logan Counties,” Heath said.

“There’s no reason to be in a hospital when you can be in a home,” she noted.

“The last thing you want to do after finding out you are terminally ill is sell your house, get rid of all your things, take your dog to the pound and stay in a hospital.

The Life Abundant House is ideal for those in this situation because “everything in this house, even the house, has been donated,” Heath said.

Wittenberg offered the house at 1120 Woodlawn Ave. to LAF for $1 a year, and the university provides garbage removal and water, and it also maintains the grounds.

The two-sided house will eventually provide care for up to two patients, guest bedrooms for patients’ visiting family members and a three-bedroom apartment for a Volunteer Schedule Coordinator.

Plans to renovate the house include adding a handicapped bathroom and a wheelchair-accessible deck looking over a landscaped garden. “We want this place to be nice,” Heath said.

“I was never trained to be an executive of a not-for-profit,” she added, “but I did learn something at Wittenberg: sometimes you just have to do it.

All the practicums, internships and different experiences taught me that I was capable of learning something new — I could tackle anything.

A project like this would have been very interesting to me when I was at Witt,” Heath said, adding that she hopes The Life Abundant House will make an impact on student life.

“It’s exciting!” Heath explains. “This is a dream. We’d like to provide this for as many people as possible. We will have this anywhere someone will donate a house to us,” she added.

— Jessica A. Gillota ’00