To Celebrate a Life

 

Dr. Lamar Riggs had had enough; enough of the hospital, enough of the treatments, enough. He informed his family that, come what may, he didn’t want to be in one of those places anymore.  

 

“He’d had a head injury, he had medical problems and got tired of going to the hospital,” says his nephew, Keith Riggs. “His main caregiver had used Arkansas Hospice before and recommended that we consider talking to them.” 

 

Lamar and family liked what they heard and started with Arkansas Hospice on palliative care. From that day on, Keith says, his uncle was in the best care money could buy.

 

“With my uncle in palliative care, [Arkansas Hospice] pretty much became his primary care physician,” Keith says. “He did not go to a hospital. They coordinated all of his care. They coordinated all of his medical devices, all of his medicine. They pretty much did everything on that. The nurse who would come in a minimum of once a week, more often if needed, was absolutely phenomenal. 

 

“The thing about it that was always highly impressive to me was, their No. 1 goal was to do what the patient wanted. They always wanted to know what Lamar wanted. Sometimes, they’d ask a question and the caregiver would kind of answer it, and they’d say, ‘No, Lamar, I want to hear from you.’ They didn’t care what I thought. They didn’t care what his caregiver thought. It was all about his dignity, making sure the outcome is exactly what he wanted.” 

 

Lamar Riggs passed in November 2020, but not before he recommended to Keith that Arkansas Hospice was what his brother, Jack, Keith’s dad, needed. Keith required little convincing, and Jack was under hospice care for about a month in spring 2021. Once again, Keith was impressed by the attention to detail as much as the compassion of the Arkansas Hospice team. 

 

“My dad had the same situation. He had gone to a hospital and said, ‘That’s it. I’m not doing any more,’” Keith says. “He didn’t want to take his medicine, all that. I recommended that we get hospice in there, and hospice became his primary physician. You don’t call 9-1-1 anymore, you call hospice. That’s the only number you call. They handle everything.  

 

“With my uncle and my dad, at the end of life, they contacted the coroner, the police. They got all the drugs that were in the house that were narcotics. They coordinated getting all the medical devices that were there. It was very, very easy to work with. At that point, they made it as easy as possible for the family, in both situations.” 

 

The Riggs family’s story is music to Arkansas Hospice’s collective ears, but they are hardly the first to have whistled this tune. For almost four decades, family members have been singing the praises of the organization, dedicated solely to helping patients of all ages and their families in 43 Arkansas counties face serious illness and end-of-life scenarios with dignity.  

 

“Our mission is about providing care, not making money to have to pay investors or anything like that. So, any money that is made is put back into the organization to enhance our care options,” says Shannon Boshears, vice president and chief philanthropy officer, whose father was a patient with the organization.

 

“We’re a nonprofit hospice, and that’s pretty much a rarity these days,” Boshears says. “In the beginning of the hospice movement, most of them were nonprofits, but that has completely flip-flopped since then. We’re the only nonprofit hospice in the state, and we serve anybody who needs that care.” 

 

Formally incorporated in 1992 as a private, not-for-profit organization, Arkansas Hospice was launched from one family’s pain. A decade earlier, Michael Aureli brought his cancer-stricken mother into a local emergency room only to be turned away with the line, “There is nothing more we can do for you.” Along with his colleague, Dee Brazil-Dale, Aureli formed the organization that would become a legacy, ensuring no family would ever have to hear those words again.  

 

 

Three decades later, the highly decorated Arkansas Hospice continues to stand out in the field of end-of-life care. It is one of the few hospice organizations to offer multiple services — including pediatric hospice and general palliative care — under one roof. 

 

It also supports a robust suite of services for patients and families, both during and following a patient’s passing. Even more impressive is how some of these are offered as a public service whether a family utilizes Arkansas Hospice’s health care service or not.  

 

“We have bereavement services. That’s one thing that’s huge for us,” Boshears says. “We are the only hospice that offers community bereavement, providing grief support to the family and friends after the patient has passed. We offer that not just to our patients’ caregivers, but to anybody. I think it’s huge that anybody looking for grief support can call on our bereavement department. 

 

“We’ve also started a national podcast called Speaking of Grief that has become one of the most popular grief podcasts in the nation. That’s been super helpful, just talking about grief during the holidays, children who’ve committed suicide. It kind of runs the spectrum of a lot of what we do.” 

 

Boshears says the main misconception about Arkansas Hospice is that it operates as a place, when nearly all of the organization’s work occurs in patients’ homes. While this has presented enormous complications during the COVID-19 outbreak, it couldn’t derail the mission-driven personnel from fulfilling their responsibilities. 

 

“Health care, in general, just took such a hit,” she says. “I think that hospices found that across the nation. With all the restrictions in nursing homes and visiting and people not wanting to allow other people into their homes, we really had to navigate a lot of those restrictions that were very difficult.  

 

From 2016: The Arkansas Hospice team helped Arnie, a 90-year-old patient and former swim coach, back into a pool he designed 40 years earlier.

 

“The nursing crisis in itself, across the board, has also been very difficult, but hospice health care workers are a special community. They really have a heart for end-of-life care or palliative care. We appeal to a certain type of nurse, which makes it harder to find people. But once we do, they’re not hopping job to job as a nurse.  

 

“We refer to it as a Hospice Heart, and it is just that. People, once they’re in that line of care, don’t want to do anything else. It’s very sacred work on a lot of levels.” 

 

Later this month, the organization will throw one of the most ambitious events in its history: Party at the Plaza, a fundraiser taking place in North Little Rock’s Argenta Arts District. The event runs from 2 to 10:30 p.m. on April 23. 

 

“We’ve never done this event. This is the largest public-facing event that Arkansas Hospice has ever done,” Boshears says. “It was over a year ago we decided we wanted to do something that was more outdoors because of the pandemic, and it really grew into this.” 

 

Among the attractions for the Party at the Plaza event are art vendors, family-friendly activities and a virtual scavenger hunt. A variety of VIP and ticketed attractions will also be offered, as well as food and drink specials by neighborhood restaurants. 

 

“Most of the activities are free to everybody,” Boshears says. “Arkansas Hospice and Party at the Plaza are really celebrations of life. That’s what we’re trying to show through this. We do end-of-life care and palliative care, but we really celebrate life through doing those things.”  

 

To learn more about Arkansas Hospice, please visit arkansashospice.org. 

 

For full details on Party at the Plaza, visit Arkansas Hospice’s Facebook page. 

 

 

Party at the Plaza Entertainment Lineup

  Kris Allen

• Jason D. Williams

• The B-Flats

• The Salty Dogs

• Rodney Block Collective

• The Rocktown Sparks

Plus the “Paw-ty at the Plaza Dogtown Dog Costume Contest,” virtual silent auction, “Scavenger Challenge” contest, “Artists on the Avenue,” a “Memory Sidewalk” and much more.

 

 

 

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