Delores "Dee" Bennett

Hospice Nurse

June 17, 1950 - January 3, 2010

On January 4, 2010, hundreds of people stopped by Trinity Lutheran Church in the small southern Wisconsin city of Fort Atkinson to pay their final respects to Dee Bennett. Family, friends and former co-workers were among the mourners but so were the loved ones of countless former patients. You see, Dee had touched many lives during her 10 years of work as a hospice nurse and her passing sent a huge ripple across the surface of this rural Midwestern landscape.

Dee's end-of-life story began 3 1/2 years earlier when she went into the hospital for "routine" surgery to remove a suspected fibroid tumor, a benign uterine mass common in middle-aged women. During surgery, it was discovered that she did not have a fibroid at all, but rather a serious aggressive form of cancer called Signet Ring Cell Tumor. It was found in multiple places including her ovary, omentum, and appendix.

After recovering from extensive surgery, Dee underwent 6 months of grueling chemotherapy with her oncologist in Madison, WI. With the cancer in remission, Dee returned to work on a part-time basis with Rainbow Hospice focusing on aromatherapy as an adjunct to traditional Western medicine.

In January of 2009, Dee presented to the E.R. with an acute small bowel obstruction. Unfortunately, emergency abdominal surgery revealed the obstruction to be associated with continued growth of the cancer. Shortly after resuming full-force chemotherapy, Dee made the decision to take a break from work to care for herself and spend quality time with her family.

Although chemotherapy was helping to slow down the cancer growth, the toll it was taking on Dee's body and soul were just too much to tolerate. Therefore, Dee Bennett, the beloved Rainbow Hospice nurse, became a hospice patient herself in November 2009.

Always the comforting teacher to colleagues, patients and families, it was only fitting that Dee sat by the hearth in her favorite rocking chair and calmly talked with us about what hope means to caregivers and patients.

Dee is survived by her husband, Mike; mother, Florence; a son, Daniel (Kristin); two daughters, Kelly (Robert) and Erin (Kent); grandchildren, Theodore and Violet; stepgrandchildren, Steven and Jesse; stepchildren, Jason and Joshua; sisters, Gloria (Gene) and Sharon; brother, Michael (Vicki); brother-in-law, Dennis (Jan); and sister-in-law, Susan (Les).

She was 59 years old.