Matt Paulus is all about taking care of people. It’s something he absorbed growing up in a small town with a father who was a doctor and a mother who was a nurse.
“My parents always made it a point to be very accessible,” he said. “People would drop by our house all times of day or night with a sick kid or whatnot. My parents were always adamant about having our home phone in the phone book so people could reach them at all hours.”
The ability to care for others shines through not only with his wife, Mary, and their six children ranging in age from 20 to 8 (Timothy, Dominic, Clare, John, Ben, Brigid) but also in his profession as a palliative care nurse practitioner. He spent eight years in cardiology and another four in vascular surgery before settling into his current role.
“Let’s face it, a lot of my patients are riding the final chapters of their lives. In a year from now they probably won’t be with us anymore,” he said. “In many ways, God has given me a gift to be comfortable with that. There is a very strong spiritual component when they know their time is limited. For people who are patients of faith, I’ll offer to pray with them and I’ve never gotten a negative reaction.”
Being present with someone during the difficulties that come with a fatal illness is not something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Paulus, however, doesn’t shy away from the difficulty and that’s something that was fostered by his parents.
Growing up, when a patient of his father’s passed away, the Paulus family would attend the funeral. On Sunday afternoons when his father saw patients at the nursing home, the Paulus children were taken along and told to go visit other residents and listen to their stories. Additionally, Paulus spent the first 10 years of his career as a paramedic.
“I saw a lot of life pass very quickly,” he said. “I had to reconcile that with my faith to see people die in terrible ways. It makes you ask the Lord, ‘How is this a part of your good plan?’ Thankfully, I had a lot of good mentors and good people who guided me through that process. At the same time, I’ve always felt a close comfort with people who are dying.”
Paulus studied music in college and has seen how music can bring comfort. When he was working in vascular surgery, he had a patient in intensive care who was a retired band director. They found a connection in their shared love of music.
Paulus plays piano and has developed a love of Celtic music, even learning to play the Irish tin whistle and the bodhran (drum), so he took his Celtic whistles to the hospital on a day off.
“It was a way to not just distract him from the pain and worry but also to recognize that he and I shared that connection and love of music,” Paulus said. “It was something to talk about other than what was going on physically with him. Music really does have some therapeutic and healing elements to it. It’s one of the more potent vehicles to provide comfort to people.”
Now working in palliative care, Paulus finds himself counseling patients who feel a loss of dignity, that they aren’t productive any longer.
“I constantly remind them that their dignity does not come from what they can do,” he said. “There’s a false notion that if you’re not productive you’re a burden. I try to help people remember that they’re full of dignity. It’s who they are that is most important.”