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By Dawn Slade
Mille Lacs County Times
When someone you love is dying, you want the very best for their final days on earth.
Knowing you are dying brings a host of emotions and complications. And continuous care for a loved one at the end of their life can be tasking for the caregiver.
That’s where hospice can help.
Hospice is provided by a team of physicians, nurses, social workers, home health aides, spiritual care providers, and massage and music therapists. Volunteers receive comprehensive training and provide a variety of services, such as doing chores, running errands, reading to patients and providing emotional and bereavement support.
But, Fairview Home Care and Hospice also offers a therapy that brings smiles to everyone - dog therapy.
“Otis” the golden retriever is a certified member of Therapy Dog International and is handled by owner Lynn Raymo of Elk River.
Raymo and Otis stop by the Volunteers of America Group Home in Milaca roughly two to three times a month to visit Jonathan Geurkink.
Jonathan has been living at the VOA Group Home for nearly three years and asked if he could remain there while he receives hospice care.
“Jonathan chose to have hospice here because this is his home,” Shirley Geurkink (Jonathan’s mother) said of the 24-hour staffed group home.
The VOA volunteers and the Fairview Hospice staff have been working together, and training each other, to grant Jonathan his request.
“I think it’s neat when a hospice team and a group home work it out,” said Shirley. “You like to honor their wishes, but you don’t always know if you can.”
Shirley said she wasn’t in a position to quit her job as a Title I teacher when she learned in February that her son had four to six months left to live.
Jonathan, who is 25 years old, has neurofibromatosis, a genetically-inherited disorder of the nerve endings, in which nerve tissue grows tumors (typically either on the inside or the outside of the body). Jonathan has it on both the inside and the outside.
He first showed symptoms at the age of two with brown spots on his body. He had his first brain surgery at age five and has since had 12 more brain surgeries.
“It’s a complicated disease,” Shirley said. And it affects everyone differently.
Because of the numerous hospital visits, Jonathan has met several famous people, including members of the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Timberwolves. And he proudly boasts that in 1996 he taught Kevin Garnett some of his magic tricks.
“I’m a magician!” he stated.
Jonathan attended schools in Milaca and Pease until 2000. He then entered the Minnesota State Academy for the Blind. He can see out of one eye, but is considered legally blind.
During his five years at the school, Jonathan earned the school’s highest award - the “2001 Roland Swanson Lions Club Plugger Award.”
In a statement about Jonathan’s award, it was said, “Probably the most important lesson we have all learned from him is that it is possible to care about others even as we are facing great struggles ourselves.”
Jonathan participated in job coaching at the school and he proudly relates, “I was a foreman at the library.”
On the day of the interview, June 4, Jonathan celebrated the 25th anniversary of his adoption by Shirley and Bob Geurkink.
Because of his terminal illness, the family requested contact with Jonathan’s birth mother and he had the chance to meet her in May.
“She has the same disease, but not in the same fashion,” Shirley said of his birth mother.
Jonathan enjoys his days at the group home, calling his social workers and other volunteers his friends. They play card games and board games and Jonathan tells numerous jokes.
“We try to do stuff he likes to do,” Heather Johnson, VOA Program Supervisor, said.
Jonathan said the combination of VOA staff and hospice volunteers is “awesome.”
He plays so many card games, like Skipbo, Uno, and King’s Corners, that the staff has to purchase a new deck of cards every three months or so.
But, Jonathan particularly enjoys when Otis visits.
“Otis likes me,” Jonathan said proudly.
And that’s obvious by the “trick” the two of them share.
Jonathan pretends to sneeze and the ever-gentle Otis retrieves a tissue and brings it to Jonathan.
Otis was a service dog for disabled people, but hip dysplasia changed his job position to that of hospice care.
Jonathan pets the dog, shares an apple with him and enjoys seeing the pup’s new tricks.
“There are so many good things that hospice can offer a person during such a difficult time in their life,” said Annette Spehar, Fairview Home Care and Hospice Volunteer Specialist. “Our volunteers, which of course includes pet therapy volunteers, are a crucial part of the hospice team.”
Physicians have been watching a spot on Jonathan’s brain for the last three years. The last experimental treatment he had lasted one year before the tumor started growing again.
But now they’re out of options.
Jonathan knows he’s dying and said, “I am looking forward to getting to heaven to get my new body.”
He expects heaven will be “perfect.”
Shirley summed up hospice saying, “They’re there to care.”
Editor’s note: For more information about Fairview Home Care and Hospice, contact Annette Spehar at 612-728-2490 or email:
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