COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — A major improvement to hospice care is coming to Colorado Springs.
“This facility really does meet a need that is not met any other way,” said Pikes Peak Hospice and Palliative Care, President Dawn Darvalics.
Over the next couple of weeks the non-profit Pikes Peak Hospice is opening the only dedicated hospice inpatient care center in Colorado Springs.
“Hospice is medical care, and it's so much more,” said Darvalics, “It's emotional support, it's spiritual support, it's personal care.”
“Early in 2017 my wife Sarah was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that depletes the calcium from your bones,” said Pikes Peak Hospice Foundation, Board of Trustees Chair, Michael Healy.
Healy sees the center as a needed benefit for the community.
The complications from his wife’s cancer required a lot of help from hospice as she was dying.
Sometimes it was at home, other times she had to check-in where the atmosphere was sterile and isolated.
“I think, when you're facing your mortality or the mortality of someone you dearly love, other people are going through that, we don't have to do it in isolation,” said Healy.
He says his family would have benefited from this new cutting-edge facility.
It goes beyond medicine.
It includes things like gardens, homey gathering spaces, an area dedicated to veteran support, a chapel, a place for kids, and a family style kitchen.
“I see this as a community. It's going to be built here among patients and their families,” said Healy.
The community has bought into the vision.
Plaques around the building show the many donors helping raise the $8.5 million goal the Pikes Peak Hospice Foundation is still working to complete.
There is enough raised to get the center open and start welcoming patients.___
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