Our Stories - Life is Precious

Hospice is not giving up
Roy Thompson

Nov, 2020

On October 1, 2020, Roy Thompson greeted his Caring Circle nurse with a cake to celebrate his one-year anniversary on hospice care.

Facing a very rare bone marrow cancer with even more rare complications, Roy’s desire to guide and help others “all the way to the end” has moved him to speak out in support of hospice care. He wants people to know that the comfort and quality of life he is living now has exceeded his expectations. After 29 cycles of chemotherapy and 13 years of treatment, Roy embraces hospice as a very good thing and must be considered as a viable alternative to aggressive care.

Over 20 years ago, when Roy retired from engineering, he became a hospice volunteer with Caring Circle. He has always been in awe of the program and the enormous physical, emotional, and spiritual comfort it offers people when heroic measures of treatment are no longer bringing life quality and comfort. Now as a hospice patient, he enjoys a great relationship with the volunteer who visits him.

Roy believes that although he is disabled by the disease process, life itself is a process and he has found peace within. He is living with internal intensity and getting away from the limitations of this world by focusing on spirituality. He credits the hospice model of care focused on body, mind, and spirit as a way to receive the care he needs without giving up and providing the opportunity to focus on what matters most.