Bad Jokes And Breaking Down Barriers
When Tina Dodd first came across ellenor, it was as a student nurse – and it was love at first sight.
Since then, Tina’s career in care has spanned several settings – from Maidstone Hospital to Woolwich’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and beyond. But ellenor – a hospice charity that provides care and support to patients with life-limiting conditions, and their families, throughout Kent and Bexley – will always have her heart.
“When I found ellenor,” Tina remembers, “I fell in love with it. Everything I wanted to do, ellenor gave me. Everything from providing care to children in the home, to following their path – from first diagnosis to the end.
“In a hospital, you’re not able to do that – you see children, then they go home. At ellenor, it’s different. You’re able to give children with life-limiting illnesses the support they need, in the place they feel most comfortable in. It’s holistic care. It’s doing everything you can for that child – rather than doing the minimum, then having to leave.”
Tina is a Children’s Palliative Care Nurse Specialist. As part of ellenor’s Hospice at Home team, her role is to care for children with life-limiting illnesses – and complex, often chronic conditions – from their own homes in the Kent and Bexley communities.
“Because these children spend so much time in hospital, it’s one of my jobs to keep them out of hospital. To do this, I liaise with their GP, hospitals, social workers, physiotherapists; these families have so many specialists and services, and it’s stressful for them.
“Our role is to reduce that stress. And equip families with the tools to play a key part in their child’s care. We can also recommend extra services – such as music therapy, and play therapy – to further reduce the pressures that life-limiting illnesses place on the family.”
By going to the child’s home to provide vital medical interventions, Tina and her team remove the need for families to travel long distances to hospital – journeys which, for families in Kent, can often mean travelling all the way into London.
This gives the family – and the child – hours of their time back every week. Time the patient can spend playing, or simply being a normal child – rather than sat in a waiting room.
But as Tina explains, providing care from within the home bestows other benefits, too.
“At ellenor, you get to spend time with the family – to find out what they’re like, and give them the help they need. While you’re caring for the child, you can ask the parents how they are – and they’re able to talk. Because you’ve given them that space, and that freedom, to talk.
“The families can tell you their worries, and you can make sure they’re supported. They can ask you questions about their child’s condition, enabling you to improve their skills and knowledge around it – explaining more about the treatment, and next steps.
“Giving them knowledge gives them power. Sometimes, of course, we don’t have all the answers. But, simply by being there, we can still be that support – that backbone.”
In a recent example, Tina has been teaching Natasha how to give injections to her eight-year-old daughter, Darcie.
Darcie has Ewing sarcoma – a rare form of bone cancer. While Tina visits the family’s Gravesend home once a week to take Darcie’s bloods, change her dressings, and flush her Hickman line, Darcie requires injections daily.
By coaching Darcie’s mum in the skill, Tina is helping equip – and empower – Natasha with the confidence and capabilities to take an active role in her daughter’s care.
Caring for children with complex life-limiting illnesses is, of course, a serious profession. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t scope for a little fun – in fact, it’s a big part of the job!
Whenever Tina visits Darcie, she takes her a new sticker. On some days, she fills a syringe with water and the two have some fun splashing each other playfully. For Darcie’s older siblings, Tina simply gets them to tell her ‘rubbish jokes’. (Something Tina’s good at herself.)
“It’s a way of breaking down barriers, and just having a laugh with the kids. I’ve looked after children with cancer for many years. To me, they’re just normal children, with normal lives, who have this extra thing. For me, it’s about trying to give them back that normal childhood. Which you can’t, of course. But what you can do is give them snapshots of one.
“You make the treatment something the child can help control; can feel some agency over.
“When a child has cancer, they have all control taken away from them. It’s a horrendous time. For me to go in and give them some small measure of control back? That’s massive. It’s why I do what I do – and why I love it.”
