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June 25, 2020
Today is my Mom's birthday.
She has done a lot of amazing things in her life but one of the accomplishments she is most proud of is her contribution to the field of nursing.
On Mother's Day I made a post about how she was at the forefront of the hospice care movement in the early 1980's as the Administrator of the Hospice of Washington.
In that role, she and her staff cared for and treated a wide range of patients regardless of their ability to pay or the nature of their illness - including those dying from AIDS.
After the Mother's Day post, a number of people reached out to me asking for more details about her work so I thought I would share a couple of articles from the Washingtonian Magazine where she was interviewed for a column entitled - "What I've Learned"
These two articles do a great job of capturing who my Mom is.
The first interview took place in 1988 when hospice care was just starting to become a more widely accepted way of dealing with those who were facing death.
Here's how it starts...
"Monica Koshuta has been dealing with death-and helping people face dying-for 30 years. Administrator of the Hospice of Washington, she is studying for a doctorate in health-care administration at George Mason University.
A patient 's quote sums up her institution's philosophy : "I went to the hospital to be cured and I almost died. I went to the hospice to die and I lived."
Here's the full article - https://koshuta.com/.../Washingtonion_MAK_Interview_1988.pdf
The second interview took place in 1991, about a year after my brother Mike was killed in a climbing accident on Mt. McKinley/Denali in Alaska.
Here's how it starts...
"Monica Koshuta has helped hundreds of people accept death. In a 1988 Washingtonian interview, she described her job as administrator of the Hospice of Washington, which cares for the terminally ill as a labor of love.
Then her son Mike was killed climbing a mountain in Alaska - and she confronted the reality first-hand."
Here's the full article - https://koshuta.com/.../Washingtonion_MAK_Interview_1991.pdf
Everyone has an amazing mom - my mom has done some amazing things.
Happy Birthday Mom.
Stay Safe...
