The culmination of a uniquely Manhasset story was celebrated Feb. 14 at the official opening of the Palliative Care Unit (PCU) at North Shore University Hospital. Events, organizations and personalities became the threads that were intricately woven to produce a fabric that will warm many for years to come.

Charles Trunz lost his wife Gerry to Ovarian Cancer two years ago. Trunz had enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street and following retirement had taken the position of executive director of the North Shore Health Complex where his wife was being treated. Before her death Gerry Trunz expressed a wish that the process of dying be easier for others.

The Palliative Care Unit fulfills that wish. The PCU looks like anything but a normal hospital wing. This part of the building has soft green walls, a running waterfall, paintings, fine art photographs and even a tranquility room that provides a place for family members to rest, to regroup. It includes a moveable four-panel oil on wood wall mural created by Scott Payne, coffee machine, a glass wall with bamboo encased in the glass, and a mosaic mirror created by Lori Pappas. The patient rooms have CD players, a lending library, sleeper chairs, and a staff willing to do almost anything to make family and friends comfortable.

Dana Lustbader, MD, section chief, Palliative Medicine, said typically "we do a poor job caring for dying patients. North Shore is now in the forefront of that with the palliative care unit." It reflects what Charles Trunz had noted when his wife was ill. "I saw a need for more rooms focused on both the seriously ill patient and the family. On just a regular floor the patient needs focused care. As an employee I saw the suffering of the family and patient and saw the need for a separate unit." While the ribbon cutting was Feb. 14 the unit started admitting in July 2007 from the ICU and among those not likely to survive. Palliative care had previously been done throughout the hospital where it is difficult for the staff to manage a dying patient on the floor. Now the PCU makes the hospital more efficient as it gets the patient off the floor where he really does not belong.

A patient in hospice care is treated in the last stages of an illness and the process can take months, while palliative care is not curative and the process is usually a week or so.

Monies raised also provided a small Family Conference Center lodged between surgical and the medical ICU on a different floor. It is dedicated to Jamie Whelan, a niece of Dorothy Forte's who died tragically in 2007 in her 30s. The furnishings were from Kimberly Frost of White Plus One in Port Washington, and many involved in the Serenity Room were also involved in the conference center.

So many participated to make the dream a reality. Charles Trunz and his four children formed the Gerry Trunz Foundation. Dear friends of Gerry Trunz, also from Manhasset, were Joe and Dorothy Forte. Dorothy Forte, outreach co-director for the Manhasset Women's Coalition Against Breast Cancer (MWCABC), said, "We decided to mobilize our efforts behind the Trunz family," and in over 2 years the foundation raised $300,000. Many Manhasset volunteers such as Maura and Kathryn Connolly supported the Gerry Trunz Foundation, Forte said, allowing them to fulfill the wish list of the doctors and nurses at the PCU.

Several artists became involved in the design of the PCU. Vivian Parisi, breast cancer survivor and member of the MWCABC, met Dorothy Forte at one of their events. She had also donated one of her paintings to a Munsey Park Women's Club fundraiser. Eventually the Munsey Park Women's Club purchased a painting titled Gerry's Tree to hang in the PCU. Parisi was commissioned to produce prints for the unit and created many, each depicting sparrows that seem to watch over the patients in each room. Kris Murphy teaches art and photography at Schreiber High School in Port Washington and her black and white prints hang in the PCU. Coincidentally, last year her photos were hanging in a bakery in Glen Head--"I'm a mom, I work and always quietly made photographs," she said. "That was my first show in 20 years." Vivian Parisi saw the show in the summer of 2007 and asked her to provide samples of her portraits to hang in the PCU. "It was so exciting," Murphy recalled, "I had taken the photographs to cherish every moment of every day and it was a good fit with the PCU, with the spirit of the space."

In an unusual twist of fate, Joe Forte's mother, Elizabeth, 88, became one of the first patients in the PCU. She was visiting her 89-year-old husband, Peter, at the hospital when she suffered a stroke, and was brought to the PCU where she died less than a week later. When Joe Forte brought his father to her bedside in the new unit, his father asked that the lights be lowered so he could talk to her romantically. And he played the kind of music she liked, the big band sound. Family and friends were allowed 24-7 access in a serene environment as they said good-bye their loved one.

The new unit has 10 rooms and six days is the average stay. The waiting list is long, and patients at North Shore Hospital have priority. In the PCU five work full time day and night, or two nurses to 10 patients with some assistants. According to staff it is difficult dealing with family members not yet accepting reality and some families are just not prepared. According to Kathy Trombley, RN, BA, there is a lot of education to be done because death has become institutionalized, it happens behind closed doors.

"It is a normal occurrence in a hospital, yet a family does not know what to expect. That is our job, to inform them so it is not so frightening," she said.

Charles Trunz related how his four sons were devastated at the time and that "I did not know how to approach them. We hoped and believed that she'd beat the disease. We knew eventually the outcome but wanted the kids to live as a unit as long as their mom was alive. During the last week or two I asked 'How do I tell my children their mother is going to die?' I had no clue. I knew what I wanted to say but afraid to say the wrong thing. Dana [Lustbader] and the team at the PCU helped us through. One of the most memorable things for me was their support and I will be forever grateful."