Hospice

[zipplewrath]

35. I had quite the opposite

I've always suspected we were the exception to the rule, because generally they come so highly regarded. And our two situations were kinda out of the norm so I think everyone was outside of their area of expertise.

Dad. He was in a "memory unit" for a couple of years, but his health started to take such a bad turn that he was put into a facility that advertised itself as a "hospice facility". He had excellent insurance and so could afford quite the high level of care provided. But he was expected to last at most 3 months and he hung on for 9. They started to talk about having to move him to another facility for long term care. Okay, we started the research, and then out of the blue, Mother is talking about terminating feeding. Kinda caught us off guard. We all lived out of town so there were phone calls first, but Mom's hearing was kinda bad. So visits were next. She couldn't seem to explain how this had come about so quickly. One brother was a designated "health care advocate". So he tried to talk to the facility and got quite frustrated. Every question was answered by starting with "Well, your mother had decided...". We knew that, we just wondered WHY? What had she been told? It's not that we disagreed per se, it's just that it came about so quickly and she couldn't seem to tell us why.

It took a couple of weeks, but finally someone made a case associated with the inability of Dad to swallow anymore and they'd have to put him on a feeding tube. Okay, I get it. It was strange though for my seriously catholic parents to choose this, but it is permissible, although most of us thought she would have discussed it with the family pastor. She had not. But whatever, once explained most of us didn't really disagree. There was this feeling though that they had backed into this explanation. That it took two weeks to think it up. But we mostly just "blamed mom" for not understanding what she had agreed to.

3 years later, Mom is in the hospital again for serious heart problems. She's too ill for any surgery and her heart is slowly failing. Maybe a month at the most. So we take her to her home and had prearranged for Hospice to come in. It was a tough day because she was becoming less than coherent and there was alot of moving around to do and various care arrangements to be made. The Hospice nurse showed up and immediately started barking orders. Two of us were there and she was dealing with the Health Delegate by telephone. She wasn't keen on answering any questions and kept starting every exchange with, "you have to understand, your mother is dying". Yeah, we know, that's why WE called YOU. She insisted on administering morphine despite mom not complaining of any pain. She did say the blood pressure cuff hurt, but the nurse INSISTED that it be taken. Mom's bed wasn't good enough and we HAD to get a hospital bed TODAY. We're all trying to cooperate but we're from out of town and everything takes a bit longer. And again, every exchange started with, "you know your mother is dying".

She died that night. In hindsight I should have figured out just how close she was. And maybe that's what the nurse was trying to communicate. The home healthcare aid that we had, took off her socks to change her and her feet were blue. Later her fingers turned blue. It's why she wasn't all that coherent. Her heart was failing so fast that none of her body, including her brain, was getting enough oxygen/blood. Having Hospice there was pointless. But I would have expected the nurse to see the signs, or at least check for them. Instead she took blood pressure but never looked at her feet. She force morphine on her for no apparent reason. And she caused a tremendous amount of upheavel in a family that was watching their mother die. We didn't need the bed. We didn't need the morphine. We needed to be told we had hours, maybe a day, not just told "your mother is dying".

Fortunately, I don't think mom or dad were cognizant enough to be aware of what was happening.