Edelweiss, EdelweissEvery morning you greet meSmall and white, clean and brightYou look happy to meet me

Lydia Kinton’s voice echoes in her patient’s living room as she serenades them — her patient and his family.

“Music opens them up to be more free,” Kinton, a senior in social work, said.

This semester, she is interning at Hospice of Wake County (HOWC), where she does office work and has a caseload of five patients and their families.

Singing is a way to strengthen a relationship with a patient, according to Kinton. She said she attended Vanderbilt University her freshman year as a vocal performance major.

Kinton said she decided to leave music because she didn’t feel like her future had “any real meaning in that field.”

However, when social work majors graduate, they know they are going to make a difference in the world, according to Kinton.

At the end

HOWC accepts patients whose doctors have given them six months to live. This six months is not always the exact time, though, Kinton said.

A person can live a lot longer than six months, or only two weeks, according to Kinton.

Anne Arndt, director of support services at HOWC, said patients may stay as long as doctors say they may die in the next six months. However, if a patient’s life expectancy is longer than six months, he or she is discharged.

Hospice is for anyone of any age who has been given six months to live, but Kinton’s youngest patient is 55 years old. It’s tough to work with someone who is her parents’ age, but she said she can’t let that take over.

Social workers have to be able to compartmentalize — take different parts of the job and know how to handle them emotionally — to succeed in the field, according to Kinton.

“It can be pretty intense,” she said.

Kinton’s hardest experience was when she was gone for the summer and unable to contact home. When she got back and listened to her voicemail messages, one of them informed her one of her patients had passed while she was gone.

She said she was upset because she was unable to attend her patient’s funeral and wished to be there for the family and share how much the woman had meant to her.

This patient provided Kinton with one of her favorite memories.

The patient’s husband had passed 30 years ago, but she said every time she looked at him, she fell back in love with him.

However, Kinton is able to handle these situations maturely, according to Arndt. Normally, Hospice does not allow undergraduates to intern there, but it made an exception for Kinton because she had already worked there and the staff knew she was mature enough to handle the situations an intern’s faces at HOWC.

She doesn’t just handle the situations. Kinton said she learns from them, too. She takes her experiences with her patients and uses them to reflect on her own life. She said she asks herself, “What am I going to be like when I’m older?”, “How am I going to handle a deceased spouse?”, “Who is going to take care of me when I’m older?” Kinton said she appreciates these opportunities to reflect.

“A lot of people my age never see themselves being sick or dying,” she said.

Coming in close contact with people who only have a short time to live encourages a person to make more responsible choices and value life more, according to Kinton.

Music to their ears

Kinton is putting together a program at HOWC to use music with patients.

“Music can be very therapeutic,” Kinton said.

She said she was surprised by the way she is able to incorporate music into social work. She thinks her year at Vanderbilt studying music was not a waste because she is able to use her knowledge in her current field.

When Kinton first told her family members about her decision to change her life’s focus, they weren’t pleased.

“At first, it was very hard for my family to accept that I was leaving the music field because I had devoted so much of my life to my voice,” she said.

However, she said it didn’t take them long to realize she could use social work and voice performance together.

“They almost go hand-in-hand,” she said.

Music is helpful when a patient is unable to speak, according to Kinton. She said some people use touch therapy, which includes holding hands and lightly rubbing the arms and back, to communicate, rather than words.

Even patients who are unresponsive are able to hear their surroundings, according to Kinton.

“The last thing to go is a person’s hearing,” she said.

Kinton said she sings hymns because the older generation is religious. However, for her patients who aren’t religious, she sings musical tunes.

“[I sing] just whatever they want to hear,” she said.

If she doesn’t know a song patients wish to hear, she will get the music online and sing it for them the next time she sees them.

Material world

Kinton said people who go into social work are there for a reason bigger than their paychecks.

According to Kinton, it is hard to get past the fact social workers don’t make much money. She sometimes doubts how she will provide for a future family, but when she visits patients and they appreciate her presence and concern, it diminishes any materialistic fantasies.

“I’m going to want somebody to go into the field when I’m older,” she said.

She said she loves working at HOWC. And, according to Arndt, Kinton is a delight to have around.

“It’s an honor for a family to allow me to be there,” Kinton said.