Bonjour and guten tag. Retired languages teacher Janine tells us about her hospice experience.

Janine in Wellbeing Centre kitchen

“The hospice saved my life.” Janine is adamant.

It hadn’t been pre-planned, but she was admitted to the hospice inpatients ward on Christmas Eve, 2025.

A knowledgeable nurse in the community palliative care team (CPCST), Janine says thanks Elaine, on seeing Janine’s deteriorating health at home mooted the possibility of a hospice bed. It was not guaranteed that one would be free but with the hospice having been able to facilitate some other patients going home for Christmas a bed was available.

A quick gathering of an overnight bag and a cab ride later, Janine says thank you Carl for sharing your own father’s hospice care story from some years earlier, she was admitted into the ward.

Feeling immediately comfortable although very seriously ill, Janine was being closely attended to and assessed by a doctor, who was with us at the hospice at the time, as part of her training to be a GP, Janine says thank you Dr Gaby, who went into prompt emergency action, summoning the ward team when Janine fainted with, what was later diagnosed as, septic shock.

Janine on her Harley Davidson 883 trike, Zillah! (Named after her fondly remembered grandmother).

Janine recalls,

“I just remember being in complete darkness, like deep under water, I was looking down at my body, unconscious, but felt I was swimming away upwards, like a mermaid, towards a light you might see from below a hole in the ice. It was a perfectly bright light.

Next thing the hole closed like, ‘it’s not your time’. I woke up in somewhat of a daze with five or six hospice people around my bed and with various monitors and tubes attached.

I really believe that for me, it was a Christmas miracle.”

After a pause, Janine continues,

“I’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the end of July ’25 and been through three rounds of chemotherapy from September, each of which meant more hospital time for me.

I’d made gradual recoveries from each round as expected but pre-Christmas I was feeling weak again.

I thank goodness, that I came to the hospice when I did because otherwise, who knows?

From crashing on Christmas Eve, I was wheeled into the hospice’s Hub Café space on Christmas Day to listen to the brass band playing carols. I was receiving IV fluids and antibiotics to treat the underlying infection, but I just knew I was in safe and kind hands. 

For the next three weeks I can only describe my experience as like, ‘lying on the wings of angels’.

As I recovered I was discovering the extra care and support the hospice offers people like me.

In the busy ward were knowledgeable doctors, caring nurses and healthcare assistants, the bright and cheerful domestic and kitchen teams, my various food allergies and intolerances were fully catered for, and really lovely volunteers delivered our food and drinks.

And then, through the hospice Wellbeing Centre and patient and family services, there was physiotherapy, occupational therapy, complementary therapy, as well as social and spiritual support.

I whiled away quite some time in happy debate with spiritual care coordinator, Tony, contemplating our faith in God, albeit from different Christian backgrounds and traditions. 

He, and others, were also interested in the other everyday things that bring happiness, like fond memories and looking forward to nice events and occasions.

I don’t know if I should say it, but it was almost like a five-star hotel break, with especially attentive people and… it was all free!”

Janine surrounded by Wellbeing Centre staff, volunteers and fellow patients

In her own life, Janine is a retired French and German teacher. She taught at St Mary’s Catholic College in Wallasey for many years having attended Birkenhead High School herself, where she gained ‘A’ Levels in French, German, English and General Studies.

Four years at Westfield College, which is now Queen Mary College, University of London, including living in France for a year to hone her language skills, then followed by a year’s PGCE course at Oxford University, set Janine up for a fulfilling life and career in teaching.

However, she also had a calling to help people who had been through difficult life experiences so, prompted by her long term partner David, while still school teaching, she trained as a counsellor and after 2004 combined her counselling and teaching roles.

She retired from school teaching in 2015, continued to teach adults and, in 2019, gained an MSc (master’s degree) in Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy to build on her all round knowledge and her sustained interest in the benefits of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

Janine has two sons, Alex and Sam, and a young grandson, Oliver. She also has a beloved cat, Luna.

What might be surprising at first sight is that Janine is also an accomplished ‘triker’. A hobby she has a great passion for and which she had shared with long term partner David, who sadly died in 2024*.

Her Harley Davidson 883 trike is named, Zillah, in fond memory of Janine’s grandmother from whom she tells us she inherited her indomitable spirit.

Attending outpatients clinics and embarking on the full Wellbeing Centre programme, Janine has learned strategies for living well outside of the hospice.

Janine with her Wirral Coastal Walk certificate

As so many of our patients do once they have completed their course, Janine has elected to join our Friday coffee morning group where, as well as a chance to catch up with some fellow patients, there are the popular baking and craft groups.

Adult hospice services continue to be available in Wirral because of the generous charitable support of our whole community. Janine has, indeed, made some kind donations herself as a thank you for her own ongoing support but, of course, this is in no way compulsory.

She says,

“I sponsored a light in memory of my partner, *David, for Light up a Life. He was a keen motorcyclist and even had Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’ as his exit song at his funeral service.

I also made a donation in thanks for my care as an inpatient and also took part in the Wirral Coastal Walk to raise some funds.

I also do a little regular donation to the hospice’s Sponsor a Nurse initiative. It’s the least I can do to try and give something back for the care and support of everyone at the hospice. 

As well as the people who directly helped me in my most critical hours, and those who still help me at the hospice, I’m just so grateful to live in a place where people are so generous, in many ways, to keep our hospice going.

There are so many people to thank it’s impossible to know where to start, but when I see them I always let them know just how grateful I am.

I never thought I’d need the services myself and no matter what I might be able to give from now on it can’t ever match, in my mind, what the hospice has given me and, I know, so many other people.”

That is so heartfelt. Thank you, Janine, for sharing those powerful words and your hospice story.