Walking through the hospice wing\u2019s beige halls, filled with sterile smells, beeping equipment and nurses\u2019 quick steps, Emily Cherny, \u201828, holds bright-pink and magenta orchids for her patient, P.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the sight of the vivid petals and Cherny\u2019s smile, soft tears rolled down P\u2019s wrinkled cheeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cherny frequently visited P, whose identity is protected under privacy laws, while volunteering at the Visiting Nurse Association Health Group this past summer. There, Cherny directly saw the impact of her small gestures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, Cherny brings these acts to the Lehigh Valley community as vice president of Lehigh\u2019s Bring Happiness for Hospice club.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The club originally started at Duke University. It began as a way to support those in hospice, a medical service for end-of-life care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This fall semester, Sianna Biem,\u201827, brought the nonprofit\u2019s mission to Lehigh to make aiding people in hospice more accessible to students.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lehigh\u2019s Bring Happiness for Hospice club partners with The Care Team Hospice<\/a> and St. Luke\u2019s Hospice<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Club members create care packages, cards and other acts of kindness to brighten the days of hospice patients. By working with hospice volunteer coordinators, the club ensures each note or gesture is personalized to patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n Christina Lieb, volunteer coordinator for The Care Team Hospice, said the club is the first student group to reach out that specifically caters to hospice patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said she\u2019s seen the impact of their work firsthand.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou can definitely see (patients) faces light up,\u201d Lieb said. \u201cSometimes it gets really lonely. The volunteers that visit our patients or give them a card give a visual representation of \u2018I see you and I hope you\u2019re having a good day.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n For Cherny, brightening patients\u2019 day is a way to give them a break. She said patients are often surrounded by doctors running tests, nurses taking blood pressure and medication shadowing meals.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to do something small but extremely meaningful,\u201d Cherny said. \u201cDoing these small things can be just as important as the medical treatment that (patients) are receiving.\u201d<\/p>\n Biem said she understands hospice staff can\u2019t give as much attention to patients as they would like because of their other responsibilities. She said the Bring Happiness for Hospice club hopes to fill the gap in service.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Beim, a helping hand from the community makes all the difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re in a state where you have such little hope, it\u2019s really nice to have someone who cares about you and puts in effort to brighten your day, sending you a little hope and happiness,\u201d Biem said.<\/p>\n As a pre-med student, Biem said learning to lend emotional support to patients is important. Approaching hospice through the lens of comfort for patients helps confront preconceived notions around the service.<\/p>\n Lieb said having exposure to people in end-of-life care helps volunteers gain perspective on what hospice is.<\/p>\n \u201cHospice is one of those things that when you mention the name people shrink back,\u201d Lieb said.\u00a0 \u201cIt sounds really scary. Like things that sound scary, it\u2019s more just because you don\u2019t know about it. Ultimately, what (hospice) is, is a lot of love.\u201d<\/p>\n Biem said she understands college students are typically young and don\u2019t have to think about hospice. However, she said this leaves patients overlooked. For her, the Bring Happiness for Hospice club brings attention to the group and gives students greater perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou really have a different outlook on life when you realize that someone has less than six months to live, and they\u2019re trying to make the most out of that time,\u201d Biem said.<\/p>\n For Cherny, volunteering at a hospice center taught her to treasure the small moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the moment, you don\u2019t realize something good that\u2019s happening, whether it\u2019s eating a sandwich with your mom or dad,\u201d Cherny said. \u201cOnce you look back on your life, you realize that all these moments flew by, and all you want to do is go back and eat that sandwich.\u201d<\/p>\n P was a well-known artist and the first hospice patient Cherny spent time with.<\/p>\n Cherny said P suffered from a severe injury, leaving the artist\u2019s arms immobile.<\/p>\n Despite her circumstances, P dedicated herself to teaching Cherny how to sketch and paint.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c(P) had so much passion and was so mentally strong,\u201d Cherny said. \u201cShe went from being an incredible artist to not being able to do what gave her life purpose.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Cherny said the experience gave her a whole new perspective on life and was very rewarding.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt made me realize that everyone ends up living a meaningful life in their own way,\u201d Cherny said. \u201cIt was so fulfilling to see that what I\u2019m doing, even if it\u2019s just talking to someone for a little bit, is making a difference in someone\u2019s life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Bring Happiness for Hospice Club is in its trial phase at Lehigh.<\/p>\n Cherny said the club has seen good perception from students. So far, the club has had a card-making event and a guest speaker visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the future, Biem said once the club receives more funding, they can start making more elaborate care packages. As a senior, Biem said she hopes the club can continue and flourish even after she graduates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lieb said she\u2019s excited to see where the partnership between the club and The Care Team Hospice goes. She said having students reach out is wonderful because of the big difference it makes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of these students are not from the Lehigh Valley, but they have such caring hearts that they\u2019re willing to help out in their adoptive community,\u201d Lieb said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walking through the hospice wing\u2019s beige halls, filled with sterile smells, beeping equipment and nurses\u2019 quick steps, Emily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[5451,119,121,120,5400,1197,1057,837],"class_list":["post-315313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-5-minute-read","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-clubs","tag-feature","tag-health","tag-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}