On death's doorstep, woman does U-turn with her bear

All the evidence suggested that 88-year-old Mary Tanaka wouldn't be receiving hospice care much longer. On a scale of 0 to 100 percent, with 0 being death, the frail, incoherent and very lethargic Mary was an imperfect 10 - not expected to see another sunrise after nearly a year with hospice.

Mary's hospice care did end last week. Mary's life did not.

"You just don't know," says Mary Jo Sheridan, a registered nurse with Rainbow Hospice and Palliative Care of Park Ridge. "Miracles do happen."

A smiling Mary, her eyes twinkling, asks if she can tell that story in her air-conditioned room in the skilled nursing community at Lincolnwood Place in Lincolnwood, instead of on the sunny patio where she had been sitting.

"It was too hot," Mary says, fluffing her freshly styled gray hair. Exhibiting the same grace and elegance evident in a stunning black-and-white portrait of herself as a young woman, Mary sits in a wheelchair.

"I cannot stand up and walk like the rest of you," she says apologetically.

Born in San Francisco, Mary spent most of her childhood in Los Angeles, where her mother ran a neighborhood grocery store. A devout Seventh Day Adventist, her mother brought Mary and her older sister and two brothers to church every Saturday.

"At home, mother was very strict," Mary remembers. "She didn't let us run around with boys."

A good-looking boy named James was one of the Baptist boys who'd visit the grocery after school.

"I never really met him until we went to the camp," Mary says.

The camp was an internment camp where the U.S. government corralled many families of Japanese descent during World War II. Mary's family was loaded onto a train and taken to Arizona, where her quarters were next to the lodging for James' family.

"James and I met working in the kitchen," Mary says, adding that she isn't bitter about the experience.

"We were young enough to accept it as part of life, but it bothered my mother, who was an extremely hard worker. I thought it was part of living. You live through certain things that your friends may not."

She and James married after the war and settled on the South Side of Chicago. James worked as a newspaper pressman. Mary was a secretary (and one of the few Republicans) working for what is now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

"We lived very modestly. I'm not accustomed to having luxury," adds Mary. She and James had no children. After James died a few years ago and Mary developed dementia and other health problems, a loved one who is a suburban judge helped Mary move into Lincolnwood Place, an upscale retirement community with services ranging from independent living to skilled nursing care.

Mary doesn't remember much about nearly dying or the helpful care she received.

"I remember they said, 'She isn't able to do anything,'" Mary says.

And she remembers the brightly colored teddy bear Sheridan gave her to hold. Mary chuckles as she said others kidded her later that she got the bear because "you weren't one of the complaining types."

Sheridan says she gave Mary the bear after watching the elderly woman perk up when a pet therapist put a hamster on her lap. Mary named her bear "Beary."

"She would often talk to the bear. She would hold the bear. It was a comfort," says Keri Bechelli, director of social service for Lincolnwood Place. "She's very humble and no-nonsense. She just takes life's punches and moves on. Maybe that's how she came out of this."

While the public often associates hospice with the final days of dying, hospice actually is about adding quality to the tail end of living, Sheridan says. Studies show that terminally ill people who receive hospice care live longer than those who don't. (Visit www.palliativedoctors.org or nhpco.org for more information.)

After 359 days in hospice, Mary's condition improved so much, she no longer was eligible for hospice.

"It does happen," Sheridan says, citing a recent Rainbow Hospice study that showed 3 percent of patients leave hospice alive. "The support she got, not just from hospice, but from the facility and her medical doctor, her power of attorney and her extended family - it was a really wonderful experience."

Mary is feeling so well, she recently gave "Beary" to "a little old lady" with whom she often dines.

"I love to share this with her," Mary says. "Why do I need it?"