Light Up a Life

“ It was like the personal  care you would get from a family member.”

— Arthur Remington Sr.

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Art & his dad, Arthur

One August day, 48-year-old Art Remington was biking to work when a passing truck suddenly came too close. He veered off into a ditch, injuring his back. But as he was being examined at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, doctors found something far worse: lumps on his back. Pancreatic cancer.

Art’s dad, Arthur, quickly flew in from Florida to be at his side. Sadly, an operation on the tumors revealed that the cancer was so advanced there was no hope for a cure.

“I was devastated. It was the hardest thing in my life—to tell my son he was going to die,” Arthur says.

After talking with his dad and doctors, Art decided against chemotherapy. “He said he’d rather spend whatever time he had left with a good quality of life,” his dad explains. That meant choosing hospice care, from Agrace.

At our hospice inpatient unit, we helped relieve the symptoms related to Art’s cancer and talked about his goals. When he no longer required inpatient care, he was still too ill to go home to live alone without a caregiver. Although he had insurance to pay for his hospice care, Art needed a safe place to live. Unable to work and struggling financially, he learned that Agrace could help.

Care for Art through Care for All

Art & his sister, Michelle

Care for All, an Agrace program funded by community donations, paid the extra cost of a room and meals for Art, so he could live at Agrace’s Johnson Residence for two months. “I don’t know what we would have done, financially, without the Care for All program,” Arthur says.

“Everything about Agrace was amazing: the care, the attention,” he recalls. “It was very important to Art that the staff would come into his room just to say ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ It was like the personal care you’d get from a family member.”

At Agrace, Art read novels and worked on 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles with his dad. His brother Steve and sister Michelle visited several times a week, and they all enjoyed strolling the grounds together. Hospice caregivers were nearby around the clock, making his days as safe, comfortable and memorable as possible.

“He had family around him, and he was so happy,”his father recalls. “Sometimes we had a whole houseful of people in his room. That’s exactly what he wanted.”