Imagine – Hope

hopehospice

Imagine that your child is dying of leukemia; you are heartbroken that there is no treatment to effect a cure and you are in anguish because there is not enough morphine in the country to manage the pain.

Imagine that your grandmother has an inoperable disease; your only option for hospice care is to curtain off some private space in your one-room house, while your family listens to her slowly die.

Imagine that the local hospital will not take your brother because he is dying and they are unable to cure him; they refuse to admit him because they do not want to make their statistics look bad by having a patient die while he is under their care.

Now imagine what “hope” looks like for these patients and their families.

In many countries hospice care is an integral part of patient care. Hospice care acknowledges that we all will die. It seeks to give patients the opportunity to die with dignity. It seeks to support families in managing the work of caring for their loved ones. This work is often emotionally exhausting and physically demanding. At the end of a person’s life, this care is often needed 24 hours a day: being on call, treating, cleaning, giving comfort, and being present at a time when many people feel most alone.

Hope Hospice in Mongolia is one of only three hospice ministries that are being run in the country. They seek to provide loving care for the sick for whom there is no hope of a cure. Hope Hospice attempts to go one more step and provide hope against the darkest of forces, death, by praying and sharing Good News with the patients and their families.

Dr. Burenjargal was called to work at Hope Hospice by its founder Dr. Altanhuyag. She had just finished her pediatric doctor’s internship training. She thought working at the hospice would be a good experience. Since hospice work was a new “American” idea, she thought she would be paid to do such prestigious work with Dr. Altanhuyag.

She told us that she should have revised her ideas after the first interview, when she was called into the rented facility’s main office and found only one chair available for a meeting with five people. From there she went to visit the ger (the Mongolian nomad’s tent) of a very sick grandmother. The dog was barking and nobody wanted to hold it to let her in. The social worker who was with her for the visit finally convinced the family that they really wanted to help them. Even though she almost had to beg at first to see patients, it was not very long before they began to request her help. Dr. Burenjargal soon found that helping families in the most difficult circumstances of illness and death was much more fulfilling than the institutional setting of the state hospitals. However, it was not as financially rewarding!

After working for one month travelling to people’s homes and giving medical care, she asked for some money because she even did not have any money left for her bus fare. Dr. Altanhuyag gave her 5000 tugrugs (about 4.50 USD at that time). The next month he gave her her first salary of 40,000 tugrugs (approx. 34 USD). Her family was shocked and could not believe that she would not be earning much more. They were even more shocked when they heard that she wanted to continue working there! Dr. Burenjargal told us that her mother had died of cancer in 1994, and that she only wished that there had been the kind of services that Hope Hospice was offering so that their family, who had suffered pain and distress, could have been given some kind of hope.

At Hope Hospice she also attended the daily devotions for the staff and learned about praying for the patients. This gave her the desire to provide hope for other families in such circumstances. It was her hope in the Gospel that gave her the peace to accept a low salary and to continue to work at the hospice.

She tells us that even now the only hospital that provides hospice care is the cancer hospital and there is over a one-month wait for one of their beds. This means that most people have no access to hospice services through the medical care system.

In 2011 Dr. Altanhuyag asked her to take over the running of Hope Hospice. They do not receive any state funding and the only support comes from patient fees and donor support. In fact, the state required that they register as a business in order to give the kind of medical help that they do (it was regarded as a private clinic since there is no non-profit status for medical clinics). The rented facilities that were in constant need of repair and the stability to offer consistent care were always in jeopardy. In 2015 Dr. Burenjargal received the International Rotary Club award for her humanitarian work. With it came a prize of $50,000 USD.

She never even gave a second thought on what to do with the money: she wanted to use it as a down payment for purchasing a permanent facility. A Korean businessman who is also a believer gave a very discounted price on a building that would be able to meet their needs. They have 5 years to pay off the remaining 2/3rds of the price.
Running costs are around $3,000 USD per month for the salaries, water, coal for heat, and medicine. This provides a 15-bed facility. According to their budget $2,000 USD of this is supposed to be met through patient fees. They hope to find donors for the rest and also hope to raise a further $1,000 USD per month to pay down their building debt.

Please join with them in prayer as they seek to provide an essential service to the Mongolian community and a place of hope and dignity for patients and for the families who face the heartbreak of terminal illness for their loved ones.

Just as we had concluded the interview and were about to leave, Dr. Burenjargal showed me a picture book. In it she explains that she collects the life stories of her patients while the staff is at the bedside. The book includes pictures which the patients have drawn of what hope and Good News means for them. After the person dies, the staff give the stories with the pictures to the family so that they have something tangible with which to remember their loved one.