GENIA Miszkowycz stared down at the boisterous red-headed girl tugging on her nurse’s uniform, but no words came to mind.
It was lunchtime on the palliative care ward, and amidst the sounds of construction, nurse Genia heard a mother taking her last breath.
She was the mum of the red-headed girl.
“She tugged on my uniform and she says, ‘Don’t you tell me my mother’s gone’,” Genia said.
“I looked at this little red thing down there, tears in her eyes – she knew, but I was not to tell her that her mother had died.
“So I never said a word because I didn’t have an answer.”
The gorgeous girl who left St Vincent’s Private Hospital without a mother is one of a thousand emotional stories Genia remembers from her 40 years on the ward.
Palliative care came to Brisbane in the mid-1970s, under the guidance of the Sisters of Charity working at St Vincent’s Private Hospital, Kangaroo Point, then known as Mt Olivet Hospital.
Genia was one of the first nurses asked to care for the dying.
“Sr Julian and Sr Nola started the palliative unit and from that they picked a bunch of girls to work, which I think was about six of us,” she said. “I was one of the privileged ones to be picked.
“It was only a small unit; we only had about 18 beds.
“And it was love of the work and love of the people that was dying.
“It was like I was given a gift to look after these patients.”
An “advocate for the patient”, the 65-year-old Ukrainian Catholic has worked as a nurse full-time since she was 17, although her first dream was to be a jeweller.
Genia met her husband, Ukrainian man Wally, when she was 17 and two years later the two married.
Back then, the nursing system didn’t allow married women to register as nurses, so Genia became an enrolled nurse.
Her 40-year stint with St Vincent’s hospital has only been punctuated by family affairs, including the birth of her two children and four grandchildren, her husband’s battle with cancer, and her own father’s death.
“It was only when my own dad died that I could actually talk really openly about death,” she said.
She credits her love for the dying to a moment when she was five years old. At just eight years old, her older sister had died of a brain tumour.
That tragic moment sparked Genia’s love for the dying.
She tried four times to get nursing work at St Vincent’s, a difficult task as many waited for nurses to “literally die or retire” but her persistence paid off when the supervising sister on the ward eventually offered her employment.
“I don’t know what dragged me to here, I don’t know, but I just knew I wanted to come and work here,” Genia said.
“I’m very important to the (hospital) unit because people, when they’re actually dying, tell a lot of things to people like me.
“I just feel a great connection with the patients and it doesn’t matter whether they are rich or poor, or they’re disfigured. “It’s like an instant love to them.
“I feel that I play a big part in making them feel welcomed, and giving them the love that they deserve.
“I’m their carer and I’m only there as a stand-in to give their relatives time to be a husband, or a wife, or a daughter or a son.”
When Genia started in palliative care as a young 20-something nurse surrounded by only 18 beds, she “didn’t realise there were so many people who died at once”.
“My first experience, I’d say, was overwhelming,” she said.
“And I cried a lot. “And I still cry a lot. “I don’t cry openly – I cry on the way home and I cry out of frustrations because sometimes I feel that I haven’t done enough, and I know in my heart I have.
“But sometimes you just feel you could give that little bit more to make them more comfortable, take the pain away or something like that.”
Genia sees patients confronted by a natural death, but has never given up on providing hope, prayers and a listening ear.
“I can sit with a dying patient and I can think of things to pray with them when they die,” she said.
“I can pray and I can pray really from deep down with somebody and I can sense when people are Catholics, and I can sense when people want you to pray but they don’t want you to pray too much.
“But my faith plays a big part in the way I nurse, the way I speak to people and respect people.”
Patients with immense suffering are often subjects of their pain, but Genia believes palliative care is the only service that can offer dying a dignified death.
“It’s much harder now because a lot of people have different opinions,” she said.
“The next morning when you come in, the patient says, ‘I’m alive, I’m still here’.
“It’s just the pain that talks.”
As she walks through the hospital doors at 5.20am to start work, Genia looks up to what she calls home.
“I walk in here in the mornings and I feel a nice warm air and I could walk on air all day and not even think of what the time is,” she said.
Her dedication has won her a wall-full of awards from all the past general managers and she is the hospital’s longest-serving employee.
“I don’t have a lot of days off,” she said.
“I’ve got time to listen.
“And it makes no difference to me whether I stay back and listen to what they have to say or whether I miss a meal break, because I always get it back somewhere.
“It’s important for me that I’m there for the patient.
“What I give I get back 10 times more.”
Genia predicts retirement is only three years away, but fights tears even just thinking about a future without St Vincent’s Private Hospital and her beloved patients.
“I say three years but I’m praying to God he’ll let me go a bit longer than that,” she said.
“I’m at an age where anything could happen but, God willing, three more years, if I push further, maybe four.
“But I think it’ll be time to quit after that.
“But say in five months’ time I found that I’m not pulling my weight, I would leave.
“I would never stay if I wasn’t pulling my weight, because it’s not fair on the patients, and it’s not fair to the hospital.”
For now, Genia’s working to make palliative care the greatest final memory for the dying.
“I have fought hammer and tongs for this place,” she said.
“Every day I’m here, I fight for this place because this is my home.”
By Emilie Ng
