TRACI MacDONALD:

Traci MacDonald's path to nursing took a detour. "My mother was a nurse and my father was an Army doctor, so I went to college for nursing, but then I took a class in modern dance," she said.

She became a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company and then formed her own company in New York City. When dancing took its toll on her body, MacDonald returned to college to pursue a nursing degree.

As a pool/flex-time nurse, MacDonald, 61, worked wherever she was needed at St. Joseph's Hospital in Atlanta for seven years, before taking a job closer to her Jasper farm at Georgia Mountains Hospice.

"Their totally holistic approach is what hospice is all about," MacDonald said. "When you're a hospice nurse, you are working in the home: the heart of the family.

"You want to help the patients live and make decisions as long as they can, and their families learn the hardest thing they'll ever have to do; watching a loved one go. When they tell you they don't know if they can do it, your job is to teach and support them."

MacDonald shows families how to provide care one day at a time.

"Don't look at the big, horrible picture," she tells her clients. "All you can do is what you can do right now."

"Traci is an angel for families and their seriously ill loved ones," said Jane Pickart, a friend who has seen her at work. "She brings homemade gifts; she sings with a 98-year-old cancer patient . . . Hospice care, to Traci, is celebrating a patient's life with the family."

"I see some tough stuff, and losing patients is still hard," MacDonald said.

She balances her care of the dying with as much life as she can pack into her farm — two horses, four dogs, a puppy and flowers.

"Positive, living things fill my cup up," she said. "Life is all about doing. I didn't dance for the performance. I danced because my body wanted to. I nurse because my heart wants to."