Hospice is Just Her Latest Calling
By Kellie Lambert McGuire, Waterbury Republican-American
Liza Leukhardt never considered herself a religious person. But the Plymouth woman made a pact with a greater being years ago as a mother watching her young daughter suffer.
“If you let me keep my daughter,” she pleaded, looking skyward, “I promise I’ll give you something back.”
Leukhardt kept her promise, and made a mid-life career change. A former jack-of-all-trades newspaper reporter, teacher, costume designer, and mother, among other talents — she dedicated her life to nursing in the hospice field.
Leukhardt, who spent her teen years growing up in Watertown, recently documented this life-changing decision in the new book “Nurses on the Run: Why They Come, Why They Stay” (Dog Ear Publishing, LLC).
Leukhardt penned the chapter “My Cosmic Uncle Sam,” which is inc luded along with 24 other stories from nurses around the country. The book, which Leukhardt learned about through the Holistic Nurses Association newsletter, serves to honor and inspire nurses of all specialties and levels of experience.
Writing is not foreign to Leukhardt. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from the University of Connecticut, where she also took many journalism classes. She also dabbled in journalism as a freelance writer.
“I thought I might have a career in writing, but then I had babies,” she said. Leukhardt has three children: two sons, ages 30 and 24, and a 28-year-old daughter.
It was her 28-year-old daughter’s illness that turned the young families’ world upside down in 1986, when the then-3-year old was diagnosed with leukemia.
“Our lives became a blur of chemotherapy, broviac care, lumbar punctures, bone marrow biopsies, vomiting, steroid craziness and stress,” Leukhardt writes in the book.
But within that world of cancer treatment, Leukhardt noticed something about herself.
She noticed how she fit in the framework of comforting others in similar situations.
“Despite myself, my frozen pain, I spent time at the bedsides of dying children. I had a strange sort of comfort there,” she writes. “I began to recognize an ability to provide some comfort and solace to the mothers. I wasn’t afraid or uneasy, I learned simply to be present.”
Her calling had announced itself. Leukhardt said she has always had an interest in the medical field, but was never completely sure of what she wanted to do until her daughter’s illness inspired her.
“I was almost 40 when I started nursing school, and it was an entirely alien sort of field to me,” she said.
The road to nursing wasn’t an easy road, Leukhardt says. She was a mother of young children and faced cha llenges as she crawled her way into the world of medicine.
But she found a sense of grace when dealing with the worst of situations: death.
Whether discussing Do No Resuscitate orders with families or dealing with the husband of a wife she had unsuccessfully tried to revive in an emergency room, Leukhardt handled each situation with civility.
“Hospice was my little niche,” she said.
Leukhardt’s first nursing job was at Connecticut Hospice in Branford and she never even considered any other specialty, she said. Her first day as a nurse, walking through the heavy wooden doors of the hospice center, beautifully carved with the Tree of Life, was filled with “rightness,” she said.
“It was a moment of pride stronger than I’d ever felt,” she writes.
Leukhardt finds satisfaction in the teamwork that quickly happens when a family is faced with a terminal diagnosis.
“I have to pull every thing together, like the chaplain, social worker, where to get supplies,” she said. “I’m definitely like a Mother Hen, so it suits me.”
For Leukhardt, working with dying patients is not depress¬ing, but uplifting. In her work with VNA Healthcare in Waterbury, the nurse spends her days visiting patients and finding ways to make their end of life — and their families’ grief — less stressful.
“It gives you a whole new perspective on life and a new set of values,” Leukhardt said.
Leukhardt has parlayed her new perspective on life into related side ventures, all of which will enrich her hospice work.
She is a counselor for Camp Jonathan, a camp for bereaved children, and is pursuing degrees in naturopathy and grief counseling.
She is certified in reflexology and hopes to implement holistic care plans into her work at the VNA.
In the meantime, Leukhardt hopes “Nurses On the Run” will inspire its readers, because anyone who purchases the book will be aiding the nursing field.
Ten percent of the book’s proceeds will be donated to nurse educator scholarships.
For details on “Nurses on the Run,” visit www.nursesonrun.
com. The book can be ordered via its website, Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.
