Advisory Board Member Carol Kiessig

Advisory Board member Carol Kiessig knows Hospice Partners‘ up close and personal’. When her mother, Bernice Hansen, a resident at The Manse on Marsh in San Luis Obispo, had congestive heart failure, the HP care team helped out during her last month. When her husband Russ (Russell Kiessig) was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer in 2003, Carol started bereavement counseling with Claire Aigaard prior to his death (he died at UC Irvine Hospital) and continued during the year afterwards.

Carol reflects back on that difficult time: “Without Hospice Partners, I would have had a complete meltdown. Claire’s compassion and clear thinking helped me understand that grieving is highly individual and made it okay for me to grieve for as long as it took.”

Carol is a long-time resident of SLO County. She and Russell visited the area in 1975 and fell in love with Sycamore Hot Springs which they soon purchased. They moved to Pismo Beach in 1977 with three of their four children (one was in college).

Although they moved to Southern
California for a while in the eighties
after buying another hot springs in that area, they returned in 1992 after acquiring Paso Robles Hot Springs (since sold).

Carol has been active in nonprofits
in the community. She and Russ started the Port San Luis Marine Institute in Avila Beach, and she has served on the Avila Beach Advisory Committee and the Cuesta College Foundation Board.

Last spring, Carol eagerly agreed to join the expanded Hospice Partners’ Advisory Board because “ I have so much respect for the organization.”

She plans to use her personal knowledge of Hospice Partners to educate others in the community about what hospice has to offer and to do some writing for the newsletter and outreach.

She will also enliven our advisory board meetings with her quirky sense of humor. During a talk over coffee she bemoaned a leak under her newly purchased house in Templeton. Then she smiled and added: “When I saw that water I said, “Russ, stop giving me hot springs!”

“I have so much respect
for Hospice Partners.”