Terminally ill patients are taken on one last journey by a former paramedic, helping them fulfill their last wishes.
The kindhearted man is Kees Veldboer, from the Netherlands. The 60-year-old founder of the Stichting Ambulance Wens, or Ambulance Wish Foundation, has taken more than 14,000 terminally ill people on a final dream journey. Veldboer is working with a specially designed ambulance and is still operating amid the coronavirus pandemic, as LADbible reports.
What this admirable foundation does is taking patients to their favorite places one last time, or to the locations where they wish to say their final goodbye.
In the Netherlands, the government has imposed an ‘intelligent lockdown’. They firmly advise their residents to work from home if possible, to shop for essentials unaccompanied, to keep a distance of 1.5 meters(nearly 5ft) apart from one another, and to wash their hands frequently.
Since the majority of people have adopted a stay-at-home routine, the former paramedic can get out and about with the terminally ill patients.
Kees shares he is presently facing significant demand for people requesting to see tulip fields in bloom before they pass away. The founder of Ambulance Wish Foundation told Mail Online:
“We fulfill wishes even now with the coronavirus. We are not in a complete lockdown so we are able to make those wishes come true. We can go to open spaces, to flower gardens, to an empty zoo, a park, a lot of people want to see the sea, it’s not forbidden. As long as we go to open places and there are not many people around, just one or two with the patient, we are fine.”
While most of the patients wish to spend time in nature, one of them simply wanted to say a last goodbye to his beloved pet horse. Another one asked to be taken on a trip to see his boat for the last time.
Originally, the former paramedic came up with the idea of taking dying patients on one last dream journey while he was transferring a patient between hospitals. They had a delay, so Veldboer asked the person if there was a place they would like to visit. The person shared they would like to go and see Rotterdam Harbour one last time.
The following year, Kees established his foundation. With the help of his lovely wife, he has been making the last dreams of terminally ill patients come true ever since.
