There's always something we can do

“I remember how deeply Dr Robert Twycross shaped this place. There was one thing he used to say that has stayed with me all these years: there’s always something we can do. Even when medicine has reached its limits, we can still be alongside someone. We can listen. We can sit with them. That simple human presence mattered enormously to him, and it still shapes how we care for people today.

When I first arrived, hospice care looked very different. Nearly all our patients had cancer. They would receive oncology treatment, then palliative care, and usually there was a fairly clear timeframe before they died. Over the years that picture has changed dramatically. Treatments have improved, people live longer, and the journey towards death is often much more complex. The range of illnesses we care for has widened too. In the early days we mainly saw cancer patients and people with conditions like motor neurone disease. Now we regularly care for people with heart failure, respiratory disease, renal failure, and dementia. People are also much older – when I began nursing, someone in their sixties had lived a full life. Today we regularly receive referrals for people in their eighties and nineties, and sometimes even over a hundred.

Sobell House itself has changed enormously too. When I arrived in 1992 the whole service was much smaller – there were five nurses in the community team and the hospital team did not exist. Over time, the hospice and its services have grown in size but despite all these changes, we’ve always kept the spirit of the place. Much of our work still involves helping people to talk about death – some people are frightened even to mention it. Often what people really need is to feel heard and to have their pain and symptoms eased. The hospice has always been full of stories.

What people may not realise is that there’s always lots of laughter as well as tears. We’ve had dog shows in the garden, birthday parties, and some patients became familiar characters having received care from many of our teams. Those moments are what make hospice care different. We’re not just providing medical treatment, we’re creating a place where people can live well right up until the end. And that comes back to what Robert always said: there’s always something we can do.”