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Bethesda resident Sheila Boland buys a lottery ticket every week but says that if she ever won, she would not spend the money on something extravagant for herself.

Instead, she said, she would give her winnings to Casey House hospice in Derwood, which made her younger brother's final days comfortable while providing the emotional support she and her family needed.

"He was smiling the last two days of his life and he wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Casey House," Boland said Monday morning at the comfortable home on Muncaster Mill Road.

Now celebrating 10 years, Casey House has served more than 3,800 seriously ill and dying patients like Boland's brother Chris and their families with a combination of around-the-clock medical care and grief counseling, said Susan Burket, a spokeswoman for Montgomery Hospice Inc., the Rockville nonprofit organization that owns and operates Casey House.

Ann Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of Montgomery Hospice, said Casey House is the only acute-care inpatient medical hospice in the county. It features 14 private rooms and allows family and friends to visit whenever they wish.

She said Casey House was dreamed up by Montgomery Hospice's board of directors and other community leaders in the late 1980s who felt that although the organization's in-home hospice care worked well, there were times when "more direct, specialty hospital-like care" was needed.

The Eugene B. Casey Foundation gave the land for the facility and the state passed a bond bill for $750,000, which was followed by a $5 million capital campaign, Mitchell said.

The facility was designed by architect Larry Frank of Bennett Frank McCarthy Architects Inc., a Silver Spring design firm, and opened its doors in August 1999.

"The fact is that we do something very important for the community and having done it for 10 years — it's magnificent," she said.

"It's an emotional time for families and so we want to respond to them in the ways that will help them," she added. "They guide us in that, but because of that we have the chaplains here, we have the volunteers, we have the social workers who help support and help hold that safety net underneath those families."

Boland, who is now a member of Montgomery Hospice's board of directors, said she and her family chose Casey House at the recommendation of staff at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. Her 54-year-old brother, Chris Boland, had been diagnosed with liver cancer and multiple organ failure on Jan. 27, 2005, and was taken to Casey House the next day.

Right away, she said, the facility's staff rallied around her and her siblings during the short time her brother stayed at Casey House. He died Jan. 30.

"They wrap their arms around you and they do not let go until you're all right," Boland said. "Hospice at home I know is fabulous, but my experience is here. Casey House is an absolute diamond in this county."