COMING TO THE TABLE
Waipuna Hospice makes time count for families. Their first Long Lunch asked Tauranga to return the favour, and more than 700 people said yes.
FROM LEFT: Shaun Lemberg, with Ezra, Isla and Archie.
When Shaun Lemberg got the chance to see the Chiefs play with a mate, his declining health could easily have got in the way. Shaun was 34, husband to Isla and dad to Ezra and Archie, living with a rare, aggressive cancer that had spread to his lungs and then his heart. His medications were planned around the trip, oxygen was arranged, and when he got home after midnight, a nurse was waiting to help him get comfortable.
It wasn’t really about the game. It was about helping Shaun keep living, as fully as he could, in whatever time he had left.
The same care carried Isla too. “Waipuna Hospice didn’t just look after Shaun, they looked after me as well,” she says. “You walk in and the nurses call out and say hello. You feel deeply cared for.”
Shaun has since passed, but his story sits behind Waipuna Hospice’s first Long Lunch, a new fundraising event at Mercury Baypark Arena on Friday October 16, which has already sold out. More than 700 people will attend, a result that’s taken the team by surprise.
“To have more than 700 people coming together for our very first Long Lunch is quite extraordinary,” says CEO David Bryant. “Every ticket purchased is helping make sure that when another family in our community needs us, we can be there.”
Less than half of Waipuna’s operating costs are covered by government funding. The rest comes from its shops, donations, events and the community’s generosity. This year, Waipuna needs to raise more than $8 million to keep its services running, and the Long Lunch is one part of that effort.
Waipuna Hospice provides specialist palliative care for people with a lifelimiting illness, and support for their families and whānau. Doctors and nurses manage pain and complex symptoms, but the care goes well beyond medicine – social workers, counsellors, physiotherapists and occupational therapists work alongside patients and families, and bereavement support continues long after someone dies.
Most of that care happens in people’s own homes and in aged care facilities. Only a small number of patients ever need Waipuna’s six-bed inpatient unit in Te Puna – usually short-term, while symptoms or medications are brought back under control.
For many families, a diagnosis like Shaun’s changes everything overnight. Hospice can’t change that. What it can do is make sure nobody has to face what happens next alone.
For Isla, the support hasn’t stopped. Waipuna’s bereavement team is still there for her. The same wraparound care that got her family through Shaun’s illness is now getting her through what comes after.
Shaun said it best, not long before he died. “I would hate to consider a world without hospice care,” he said. “It would put so much extra stress on families like ours, and everything would feel harder.”
On October 16, more than 700 people will come to the table for Waipuna Hospice, some for the first time, others already knowing what that care can mean. Either way, they’re making sure that when the next family gets news that changes everything, Waipuna will still be there to help them make the time they have count. WAIPUNAHOSPICE.ORG.NZ