Clinton Township
October 2, 2014
By Nick Mordowanec
C & G Staff Writer
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» click to enlarge « 
Photo submitted by Sally Girard, Henry Ford Macomb Pulmonary rehab patients, from left, Christine Bergeron, Lauri Kazak, respiratory therapist Diane DeClerck and Frances Brown release Monarch butterflies.
Photo submitted by Sally Girard, Henry Ford Macomb Pulmonary rehab patients, from left, Christine Bergeron, Lauri Kazak, respiratory therapist Diane DeClerck and Frances Brown release Monarch butterflies. |
CLINTON TOWNSHIP — In Henry Ford Macomb’s Pulmonary Rehabilitation Center, hope can be hard to come by.
Patients in the center are often dealing with their own struggles, ranging from chronic pain in the lungs to debilitating diseases.
Diane DeClerck is a respiratory therapist in the rehab center at Henry Ford. She has worked as a respiratory therapist since 1978, and she started working twice a week in a separate outpatient building 10 years ago — when she first started doing pulmonary rehab.
Pulmonary rehab is a structured, medically supervised program where patients receive education, get exercise and learn about their personal ailments. The range of illnesses include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis and other general lung conditions. Most of the lung illnesses are incurable.
But the former hospital floor therapist views her job as an outlet for hope and happiness, extending beyond the line of patient and instructor. It’s about becoming friends.
“I love this job, enjoy this job, want to do it 10 days a week but we’re only open two days a week,†DeClerck said. “You become close to the patient, develop friendships, share life with them, they share their life with you. I really get a lot of satisfaction out of helping people and I really enjoy the people I meet.â€
Becoming close to someone with a lung disease is complicated.
“You become friends with them and you get to know them and they eventually pass away,†she said. “I’m used to that.â€
It’s nothing new to her. She understands the pulse of the hospital and the overall atmosphere of her area of expertise. From physical and emotional viewpoints of life and death, to meeting families and understanding someone through that avenue, DeClerck and two co-workers strive to make patients know they care.
Four years ago, DeClerck was introduced to a woman at a luncheon who raised Monarch butterflies. She had caterpillars and raised them until they hatched from a chrysalis and became butterflies.
DeClerck learned that Monarchs fly to Mexico in the fall and migrate back in the spring, going as far as Canada and then back down to Mexico in between. The Monarchs that come out in spring only live about five weeks, just breeding and laying eggs before they die.
One day, she brought butterflies, caterpillars and chrysalis into the rehab center, letting people who had undergone lung transplants release butterflies for symbolism. When they released the butterflies, a certain feeling came over them.
“They told me how wonderful it was,†she said. “I recently had a woman who released a butterfly (and wrote) a poem about what it made her feel like. It’s healing and makes the person feel real good. I feel really good when I come back the next day and they tell me what it did for them.
“I wish I could make them all better, but sometimes they need a hug and they’ll ask me for a hug. I think the more we can do for people is the best we can do four ourselves because when you find out you made someone feel real good, it makes you feel real good.â€
Christine Bergeron, 62, of Clinton Township, has emphysema. She started having issues in 2005, but her health began to deteriorate even more in 2009. She is waiting for a lung transplant.
She finds DeClerck’s butterfly remedy quite interesting, to say the least.
“You wonder how a person gets themselves involved in raising butterflies, like where does that type of interest come from?†Bergeron said. “It’s almost like dog therapy, like how they bring dogs to the hospital. It’s new life watching them emerge.â€
Patients gather in the center when a new butterfly hatches. Everyone gazes as the wings unfold and the butterfly doubles in size, hanging upside down while its wings blow out. When the butterfly is ready to move on, DeClerck puts it on a patient’s hand, where it will sit, flex its wings and say goodbye.
She cares for her patients, and she also cares for the butterflies. DeClerck noted that the Monarch species is in trouble due to limited milkweed in farmers’ crops. She is enamored with butterflies nowadays because of all the meaning it brings to her own life.
For the patients she deals with and the feeling it gives back, hope is more than just a four-letter word.
“Just how many people have held a butterfly and watched it fly away?†DeClerck said.