Patient Story

Aleen Gentile

"When I tell people my mom is in hospice, they say ‘I'm so sorry.' I say, ‘Don't be sorry. Hospice saved my mom's life.'"

Aleen celebrates her birthday dinner with her daughter, Michelle.

As Aleen Gentile celebrated her 97th birthday eating lobster, shrimp and key lime pie, family all around, her daughter, Rev. Michelle Gentile, couldn't help but be amazed and thankful.  Michelle tenderly recalls that after the family sang happy birthday to Aleen, she "blew kisses to all of us. It was really a God moment, and hospice gave us that gift."

A year earlier, Aleen was on a feeding tube receiving only water, and the family expected she wouldn't live much longer. "I truly believe hospice saved my mother's life," said Michelle. "If it hadn't been for hospice, she would have died a year and half ago."

Aleen had lived independently at home until she was 94, but then she fell and broke her arm and bones in her feet, and suffered a stroke while in the hospital. A series of infections and illnesses followed, and Aleen bounced back and forth between the hospital and a nursing home as her health steadily declined.

Michelle's husband, Rev. Randy Whitcomb, is a hospice chaplain, and Michelle thought hospice could help her mother. Aleen began receiving hospice care in the nursing home through In-House Hospice in Michigan.

"The hospice doctor figured out my mom shouldn't be on Parkinson's medicine, and once they took her off that, her demeanor was like night and day," said Michelle. "Suddenly we went from having someone who was drugged and out of it to someone who could clearly communicate, knew what she wanted to eat, knew what she wanted to do and away we went."

Now Aleen is hoping to live to 100.

Although bedridden, Aleen enjoys life, says Michelle. The hospice foundation provided the lobster meal. "She gets a massage therapist and a social worker and they give her quality of life," said Michelle. "She's happy!" Through a pet therapy program, a black lab that is trained to work with hospice patients comes into Aleen's room and puts her head and paws on the bed so Aleen can pet her.  "Mother loves all kinds of animals," said Michelle.

"We really appreciate the hospice team and doctors - we work together as a team," said Michelle. "When your loved one is up and down and so sick with the dying process it's like a roller coaster.  The great thing is the hospice team really is there to support the family and to help you get through those days and moments."

When Michelle's older sister, Sandy Aldrich - who lives in a facility for seniors - told fellow tenants about her mother receiving hospice care, they recoiled. "They said "Oh, they take your doctors away, oh they take your medicine away,'" said Michelle. "But that's not true. They figure out what medication you do and don't need. You do keep your doctors, and you get hospice doctors too. And you also get all of this loving care.

"When I tell people my mom is in hospice, they say ‘I'm so sorry,'" recalls Michelle. "I say, "Don't be sorry. Hospice saved my mom's life.'"