Hospice created Christmas for patient in November

Guernsey's hospice recreated Christmas for a patient in November so she could enjoy a festive experience with her family before she died.

Carrie Watson's mother Tracey De La Mare passed away just days after nurses at Les Bourgs Hospice made her wish of a final Christmas come true.

Mrs Watson said her family were "blown away" by the effort put in by hospice staff.

"Just the little things like the arts and crafts for the children, I wasn't expecting that," she said.

She added: "The tree, the lunch was beautiful, but it just took the pressure off all of us not having to worry about doing the dishes or cleaning up.

"My mum couldn't really do much, but she sat there and she watched everything, and I could just see her and she was just taking it all in and it was beautiful. It was really beautiful.

"Christmas was everything to her - she loved her grandchildren, her grandchildren were her world, so for Christmas everything was just completely overboard.

"I think last year the kids had 22 presents each, it's a lot but she's just a very happy person," Mrs Watson said.

Letisha Vermeulen is the hospice's care manager and said Christmas was often a challenging time for patients.

"For those that might not be able to get out of bed, some people might not have family at all or families able to come in as people live all across the world," she said.

"So, for us, our main goal on that day would be to still give that recognition, to make that moment and that day special for the people with us.

"And that means we need to be quite open-minded to everyone's traditions, everybody's thoughts about what they enjoy.

"You could literally go into every room and have something different happening in that sense."

Hospice CEO Rob Jones said the change in the complexity of issues and the increase in demand had been the biggest challenge in 2025.

"Someone may come in with multiple cancers or other life-limiting conditions and our job is to ensure people are as pain free as possible," he said.

"What we have seen is a really big increase in people that need the highest level of care and we've responded to that by recruiting more nurses to bolster our team.

"It's something which isn't going to go away, that's going to continue.

"Also, we know that we're in an ageing population as well, so the demand is going to be increasing... we're really feeling it this year."

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