Her visits provide much relief and reassurance to Mdm Chua’s daughter, who is her primary caregiver with assistance from a domestic worker.
The 64-year-old daughter who did not want to be identified said: “I feel a sense of relief when Katherine is here. I can reach out to her if I have questions.”
Over the nine years that Ms Lim has been working in palliative care, she has built close bonds with her patients and their families.
She recalled an elderly patient who treated her ‘like a granddaughter” and gave her a monetary gift in a red packet when she got married in September 2019.
She did not keep the money due to company policy, but kept the red packet envelope as a memento for the time she had spent with the patient, who died six months after she got married.
Dealing with death is an inevitable part of palliative care.
“The first death I witnessed when I first started, it was a bit scary because I was just on an outing with the same patient the day before,” Ms Lim said.
“Eventually I felt that death itself could be a relief, knowing that the patient is free from suffering.”
