Cough pillows one of many projects from homemakers association

As if surgery itself weren't bad enough, sometimes the gut-wrenching coughs that necessarily follow can deepen a patient's misery even more.

In many hospitals, a simple remedy known as a cough pillow may be just what the doctor ordered.

A big-hearted but little-known group of women, the Plato Center Homemakers Education Association, provides those pillows regularly for patients at Elgin's Provena St. Joseph Hospital.

And with eight sewing machines lined up on adjacent tables, the women joined together recently for a workday to begin making 150 of them.

When the operation began, pillow pieces had already been cut from a colorful variety of cotton fabrics -- some new, others embarking on their second life.

"This is from a dress I made," said workshop director Jackie Anderson of Elgin, indicating a lively pattern.

Cough pillows can take on any of a number of designs, but Provena St. Joe's is sort of an abstract teddy bear, a roundish pillow with ears. Broad and flat, it becomes like a splint protecting an incision, and the animal-like quality is intended for emotional support.

"They're cute, and I think people are comforted by their looks," said Angela Kendall, a registered nurse in the cardiovascular intensive care unit.

The tedious scissoring done, HEA volunteers set up an assembly line to sew and stuff the ears with batting and attach "Made by Kane County IL Homemakers Education Association" tags to the pillow bodies. Then they join body pieces together and iron their work.

Hospital auxiliary members will finish the job by stuffing the pillows and sewing the remaining gaps in the seam.

"They take these, and they have big stuffing parties and sew them up," said HEA member Nancy Haire of Elgin.

The hospital offers cough pillows to patients primarily after cardiac or abdominal surgeries. Recovery room nurses hand out perhaps 20 each week, said registered nurse Maureen Cassidy.

"They help keep the (patient's) insides from jiggling around," she said.

"The pillows are used to hug to their abdomen if they have an incision," Kendall said. "It creates a pressure, so it causes less pain when they have to cough or take deep breaths.

"They have to do both postoperatively," she added. "It helps keep the lungs clear and prevent pneumonia."

The homemakers enjoy helping patients to a speedier recovery.

"It's a way to supplement what the nursing staff is doing," said Kay Duy, an HEA member from Elgin. "I think cough pillows are very unique. I didn't realize they were still doing them in this day and age."

To some people, the HEA itself might sound like a throwback to another time.

With 35 members, the Plato Center association is one of a dozen HEA groups sponsored by the University of Illinois Extension in Kane County. The extension also hosts the more well-known 4-H clubs for kids, leading Haire to joke that HEA is "4-H for big people."

Meetings and activities focus on cultural enrichment, family issues and international education -- they're learning about Greece this year -- plus community outreach.

These homemakers are not just stoking the fires of their own homes. They collect food and other essentials for the Community Crisis Center, save box-tops for education and Campbell's soup labels for Otter Creek Elementary School, gather margarine containers for "doggy bags" at a local soup kettle, round up old books for the Little City Foundation, clip canceled postage stamps for 4-H projects and set aside empty pill bottles for medical missionaries to use to dispense medication.

Always mindful of ways to help, they even save used egg cartons for a local chicken farmer.

Some of the women knit helmet liners for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They turn old sheets and towels into "cancer pads" -- sterile dressings -- for needy patients, and stitch sturdy upholstery fabric into walker and wheelchair bags for a local nursing home.

And many will continue making cough pillows.

"What we don't finish today, some of the ladies will take home with them and take to the hospital another time," Anderson said.

But they have fun working together for the morning, chatting and grabbing bites of coffee cake when they can.

They like knowing that their cuddly, colorful pillows are good medicine for those who eagerly receive them.

"When you're in the hospital, everything is packaged and sterile," Duy commented.

"This has a little touch of homemade. With all the sameness, this is something that has a little softer touch of home."