“You treat them individually, as people, not as sick or elderly; You provide support, listening, dignity, self-esteem and a certain normality at a time when these people know that their life has an expiration date, they review it and feel a bittersweet aftertaste because (in general) no one wants it to end because they have pending issues to close. personal”.
This is how Natalia Cano, civil servant and asset manager in a local administration, describes her activity as a volunteer for the Oncolliga Foundation. Like her, more than thirty volunteers from this institution provide support to people in the last stages of their lives in the framework of the "la Caixa" Foundation's Comprehensive Care Program for People with Advanced Illnesses.
The program, which tries to address the psychological, social and spiritual needs of these people and their families so that they end their days in a serene and dignified manner, has served more than 650,000 people throughout Spain since 2008, 290,181 of them sick. and the rest family members. Psychologists, social workers, nurses, doctors, pastoral agents and volunteers such as those from the Oncolliga Foundation participate in it.
“The motto is to improve the quality of life of someone who is dying, and our way of doing it is to accompany them, be by their side, listen to them, comment on a film, play a game of ludo or dominoes, learn about their biography... In definitively, making the person visible, giving meaning to what they are and not just seeing the disease,” explains Jordi Abad, volunteer coordinator at the Oncolliga Foundation.
Both he and Cano agree that this type of support is fruitful for both the patient and the volunteer, but it is not easy nor is everyone prepared to offer it.
“It is hard, because emotional bonds are established, but the experience is bidirectional and when you help the person in that personal work that they have to do before dying, you also work on yourself, because they are life lessons and the development of empathy: although "It's hard to think about it, who tells you that you won't be in their situation tomorrow?" says Cano.
Abad emphasizes that one of the requirements to participate in this type of volunteering is to have already experienced the suffering of accompanying the illness and end of life of a loved one. “This prepares us to accompany the uncertainty, fear and suffering of the person we want to help, but we also have to train to have tools with which to face these types of situations and know how to help,” he explains.
In this sense, the volunteers of the Oncolliga Foundation receive mandatory training of about 8-10 hours before undergoing a personal interview to assess what their expectations are and if their profile fits to provide support at the end of life; Then, when they begin their task, in a hospital or at home, they are tutored by expert volunteers.
“We do personalized follow-ups, group talks to share experiences that enrich others and also to detect if the suffering with which they work turns against the volunteer, and in that case support is provided from the Foundation's psychologist so that "Do not overflow," says Abad, who specifies that, of the 70 people who volunteer in care at this institution, only thirty provide support to terminally ill patients.
Natalia Cano has been part of this group for just a year. “I came because I study at the UOC, which allows credits to be validated for volunteering, and I saw in that program the opportunity to do something that had been on my mind since my father died of cancer and my mother of Alzheimer's and I saw that there were others sick people practically abandoned in the hospital or nursing home, ending their days very alone due to the shortcomings of the political system and social services,” he says.
Now she helps ensure that this does not happen to Karla, with whom she meets once a week in a cafeteria in Barcelona when her health allows it and for whom she also provides support by telephone. One of the topics that she talks about is helplessness in the face of the different timeline that governs those who have an advanced illness.
“Karla applied for social housing four years ago for which she meets all the financial and mental and physical autonomy requirements, and for the administrative staff who have to process it or grant a benefit, everything comes down to a bit of waiting because the administration is slow. , but those who have terminal cancer what they think is that they will give it to them when they go to the other world and it is now when they need to improve their quality of life,” Cano exemplifies.
