COEUR d'ALENE - Peggy Hendricks thinks hospice care saved her life.

The 90-year-old said she knows that's not what people expect to hear about hospice, which is end-of-life medical care that focuses on providing comfort and emotional support to the terminally ill.

"Really, hospice isn't just a place you go to die," Hendricks said.

A resident of Coeur d'Alene Homes Assisted Living and Memory Center, Hendricks knows this from experience.

"They call me a hospice dropout," she said, with a smile.

Not long ago, diagnosed with a degenerative heart condition, Hendricks was a hospice patient, under the care of Hospice of North Idaho.

Her condition worsened earlier this year, after she tripped and fell in her apartment, injuring her head. Hendricks became disoriented, and her health deteriorated.

Her grown children began to gather by her side.

"My son in Dallas, he didn't think I was going to make it," Hendricks said.

She pulled through, but remained uncertain and frail. It was a scary period for the woman. She began hallucinating, and says she felt very alone and misunderstood.

During that time, Hendricks began receiving more frequent visits from Drea Bowen, a hospice social worker. Grant MacLean, Hospice of North Idaho's chaplain, often sat with Hendricks talking, praying and singing her favorite church hymns to her.

Over time, Hendricks' condition began to improve. Her mental clarity returned. The self-described "people person" - a gentle woman who, today, laughs easily and smiles often - began to feel like herself again.

"They listened to me," Hendricks said of the hospice workers. "I can't say enough good about them."

Social worker, Drea Bowen, said she thinks the increased emotional and spiritual support Hendricks received through hospice care helped the woman rally back from her deteriorating state.

"That really was a turning point for Peggy," Bowen said. "She became better able to have conversations and participate in her care."

Hendricks' physicians eventually removed her from hospice patient status and began providing palliative care. Palliative treatment is no longer curative, but focuses rather on maximizing patients' quality of life by providing comfort from pain, medical guidance and emotional support.

Hendricks recalls experiences she had years earlier, when the tables were turned. It was a time in her life when she was connecting with others, listening to them and supporting them as they worked to improve the qualities of their lives.

After her husband Perry retired in 1986 from his position as vice president of finance and operations at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., the couple spent several years doing volunteer work in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

Hendricks and her husband took on the mission work at age 65. Devout Lutherans, the couple pledged 10 percent of their years to God.

"That's 6-and-a-half years that we wanted to give back," Hendricks said.

They began praying for guidance, she said. They were led to World Concern, a Seattle-based nonprofit humanitarian relief organization. In a hospital in Nepal, Perry helped update the institution's administrative procedures and gave computer training. Hendricks assisted the Nepali secretaries as they needed to complete much of the hospital's paperwork in English.

"The girls needed a lot of help," Hendricks said.

She studied the Nepali language so she could help them translate, and helped nurses who needed to learn English.

The couple did similar work in Bangladesh and Kenya, where Hendricks became acquainted with some the needy mothers living in the slums of Nairobi.

There was no running water, and a dozen families would share a single latrine.

Some of the women showed signs of domestic abuse, with cigarette burns on their arms.

"It just broke my heart to see how low women were living there," Hendricks said.

Hendricks spun wool with the Nairobi ladies. She helped them make other craft items they could sell. She worked with them on their English skills, and she prayed with them.

When she and Perry returned to their life in the states, Hendricks continued working to help the Nairobi women she said had been "so hospitable to me."

She took calligraphy classes and designed note cards she began selling, with all the proceeds going to Nairobi to help send the women's children to school.

"I sent $12,000 from these cards after I came back," Hendricks said.

Hendricks' husband died in 2004.

She has lived at Coeur d'Alene Homes for nearly three years.

As Hendricks' condition was improving, a dear friend, also a Coeur d'Alene Homes resident, was diagnosed with cancer.

"She became a big advocate for him to get hospice care," said social worker, Bowen.

The man died in October at Hospice of North Idaho's new Hospice House.

Hendricks' daughter took her to the Prairie Avenue inpatient facility to visit the friend she enjoyed watching baseball games with.

"He had a good ending, I'd say," Hendricks said.

She said they both shared a deep faith in God, and talked often about which one of them would die first.

"Hospice House was a wonderful place for him to be the last week of his life," Hendricks said.