Nurse Finds Fresh Purpose After Kline House Experience

Jen Sachar lived through challenges that are not uncommon when it comes to caring for elderly parents. “In 2019,” she says, “we had to move my mother from New Jersey to Maryland, because she had no other family around her and had just suffered a stroke.” The stroke led to seizures and other complications, and soon caring for her mother became a major part of Jen’s life.

With COVID-19 arising around the same time, circumstances were made even more difficult, including the ability to visit and monitor her mother regularly. “She was in and out of hospitals and rehab,” Jen says. Visiting hours were curtailed or nonexistent, and once her mother herself contracted COVID-19, her health took a turn for the worse.

When it seemed clear that her mother wasn’t benefiting from treatment, Jen made the decision to have her admitted to Kline Hospice House, where she passed in January of 2021: “It was a decision, in hindsight, that I wish I’d made earlier.”

What’s different and interesting about Jen’s story is that she herself is a nurse, who chose to dedicate herself to Frederick Health Hospice after the positivity of her mother’s experience. “The Kline Hospice House allowed me to engage with my mother as a family member at the end of her life,” she says. “Many times people suffering with sick loved ones are also responsible for their care, and can’t focus on spending time, just being there.”

She was really heartened by the Kline House environment, which feels more like a family home than a clinical space. The staff is small, there’s an atmosphere of peace, and visiting family and friends feel welcome. It’s a place for both the dying and their family members to find rest. It allowed Jen to spend that last time with her mother in a way that served both of them.

Shortly after her mother’s passing, she saw that Hospice had a nurse opening and she applied. “The staff was worried that it might be too soon, but I felt called to the position,” she says. Now she loves what she does and feels gratified to be able to bring others the same peace and attention that her mother received.

As a hospice nurse, Jen says that she hopes to correct some of the misunderstanding people have about hospice as a choice and a service: “I might have been able to spend more time with my mother in that space of peace if I had elected to admit her earlier.” When aggressive treatment starts to cause more harm than healing, hospice can actually lengthen a patient’s time experiencing positive quality of life. The focus becomes peace, comfort, and loving connection.

“It’s not about ‘giving up’ treatment,” Jen says, “but an informed choice to make these moments count.”