Today was our first day at St Christopher's hospice. On the morning of our visit, I was very apprehensive and was trying to get my head around the fact that I would be meeting some very sick people, and although I had done ample research about the hospice, I still had doubts about what the atmosphere would be like.
I arrived at the hospice in very good time, and this gave me a chance to get settled into the environment and get rid of my nervousness. When I entered the building and came across the café area where we will eventually be performing, I was surprised at how relaxed the atmosphere was. We walked through to the garden, and it was serene and very tranquil, a lovely place to be. Therefore, my initial anxiety was eradicated just from being in the hospice and it being much less daunting than I imagined it to be.
When everyone had arrived, we set up the room awaiting the arrival of the patients. There were ten who came, and we began the session. We began by going around the circle and saying our names accompanied with an action of a hobby of ours and a sound. This exercise went really well and every single one of the patients could and were very willing to participate, seeming very excited when the whole circle reciprocated their action. It was much easier than I had expected to alter the task slightly for those who could not remember what their action was by the time we got back round to them in the circle or those who had difficulty communicating verbally, and everyone was able to join in. I really liked hearing the little stories and snippets of people's lives that they were very willing to impart when we asked them about their actions. For example, one lady named Daphne said that she wanted her action to be from when she was working as a nurse on a maternity ward because she really enjoyed her job so we all motioned rocking a baby accompanied with a 'shh' noise.
After the initial introductions and the exercise all the students split up into groups of 2 or 3 and each sat and talked to one of the patients. I spoke to a lady called Jane, and really enjoyed her company for the short time we spoke. I picked up that Jane did not really want to talk about herself, and was more interested in learning about us, which Amelia and I responded to. From the little information that Jane did give about herself, the three of us found that we had a lot in common. Jane was very into musicals, as are Amelia and I, and she was going to see the Jersey Boys at the weekend, which I will enquire how she found it next week. We also found that we all had a love of cats, and that Jane has two cats whom she loves taking care of, which was evident from her action in the beginning exercise which was stroking her cats. Interestingly, Jane was a part of the project last year with the students in the year above and really enjoyed it. The conversation flowed naturally and I think resulted in all of us having a good time.
Something that I found quite hard was my tone, as I wanted to be friendly and come across well but I didn't want to come across patronising in any way. I thought it was hard to find a balance between being attentive and genuinely interested in the patients and perhaps being a little over the top out of wanting them to feel relaxed and enjoy our company.
Towards the end of the session I think I really relaxed and settled into the situation and all the slightly negative thoughts I had earlier in the day had completely gone. I am excited to go back to the hospice next week and find out how everyone is again, and am much less apprehensive. Also, upon speaking to the rest of the company after the patients had left it was clear that we all had gathered lots of information after only half an hour of speaking to them, which I think will result in us having a really interesting performance at the end full of material that will please the patients.
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