Read Time: 5 minutes
In 2018, Ruth Hill got out of bed one morning and felt her spine literally break. The 53-year-old collapsed to the floor.
“I knew something catastrophic had happened,” Ruth says. She soon learned six of her vertebrae had cracked and two had exploded. The doctor at the hospital in Colorado Springs, where Ruth had been visiting her son and grandchildren, gave her even more devastating news.
“You’re filled with cancer. It’s incurable,” he told her. “We’re going to take you upstairs and check your brain. If it’s in your brain, you won’t have long to live.”
Diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, Ruth stayed in the Colorado hospital for 10 days until she traveled by Life Flight to Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah (the U). She remembers laying in her bed feeling hopeless. Then a man with glasses came into the room. He sat down by her bed and took her hand.
“I’m not going to let you die,” said Douglas Sborov, MD, MS, director of the Multiple Myeloma Program and an associate professor in the Division of Hematology at the U. This physician’s words turned on a light inside her.
“I said, ‘Let’s do what we need to do,’” Ruth recalls.
Treatment for her cancer began, and palliative care started a few weeks later. Care providers asked Ruth a lot of questions: about her pain, what she liked and didn’t like doing, plus—most importantly—how she wanted to live.
“It makes you go from being a patient to being a human,” Ruth says.
Palliative care is intended to give someone a sense of control, explained Holli Martinez, FNP-BC, advanced practice clinician director of the Supportive and Palliative Care Program at University of Utah Hospital.
“It’s a group of specialty-trained clinicians working as a team,” Martinez says. “We focus on improving quality of life, easing symptoms, helping navigate medical treatment now and in the future, and strengthening coping for the patient and their family.”
Hospice Care vs. Palliative Care
When hospice care is appropriate for a patient, they are likely to pass away within six months due to their advanced illness. They’ve also made the decision to receive comfort-oriented medical care where they live, which may be their private residence, a long-term care facility, or an assisted living facility.
Read more about the difference between palliative care and hospice care for people with cancer.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the patient—whether they’re a child or an adult—is going to pass away anytime soon. In fact, many people who receive palliative care often live many years with their serious illness.
“It enables the patient and the people who matter to them to live well—even patients where cure is possible,” Martinez says.
Ruth’s first goal was to get off all her pain medications as soon as possible. Palliative care providers worked with her to find strategies to do that and new ways such as acupuncture to help decrease her nausea.
Her palliative care team asked if she might consider mental health therapy. At first, Ruth dismissed the idea. But then she reconsidered—a decision she’s grateful for to this day.
A year and a half after Ruth’s diagnosis, her husband of 34 years, Lance, unexpectedly died of a brain aneurysm. Her first call the next morning was to Jennifer Mijangos, LCSW, a social worker at Huntsman Cancer Institute.
“I realized she had been teaching me about how to grieve cancer—but she was also teaching me how to grieve,” Ruth says. “When Lance died, I already had the steps.”
Most palliative care begins while someone like Ruth is still in the hospital. The care can follow the patient from the emergency room to the intensive care unit to rehabilitation. When the patient returns home, palliative care is either virtual or takes place in a clinic. It may ultimately also include spiritual care, wellness and integrative health, advance care planning, and more.
“It affects the whole family when someone you love is going through a serious illness,” Martinez says. “Many family members say, ‘I’m so glad we had this conversation, because I wouldn’t have known my mom’s wishes.’”
Ruth’s team helped her sketch out her own funeral plans. “I became so empowered by that,” she says.
In the summer of 2024, Ruth received her 254th chemotherapy treatment. She continues to work full-time and recently got remarried.
But for a while, she was scared to travel too far away from Huntsman Cancer Institute. What if the cancer flared again?
She credits Meredith Bannon, PA-C, the physician assistant on her palliative care team, for giving her the courage to travel again. They worked together to create an emergency bag with pain pills and anxiety medications in case something went wrong on the trip. Ruth plans on traveling to Budapest—and bringing her emergency bag with her.
“She gave me this strategy to live my life not being fearful,” Ruth says. “I may have cancer, but I’m a mom. I’m a grandma. I’m a partner. I’m a new wife.”
If someone were to ask whether they should consider palliative care, Ruth has a simple response: “Why not? Use every tool available and find out what works for your journey.”
Growth of Palliative Care
Over the last few decades, palliative care has grown exponentially both in Utah and across the nation—in large part because advances in medicine are keeping people with serious illness alive longer. The palliative care team at the U, which began in 2005 with two nurse practitioners and a part-time physician, now counts 28 full- and part-time providers, including hospice, palliative medicine, and advanced practice clinician fellows.
Learn more about palliative care at Huntsman Cancer Institute.