A hospice nurse was determined that my mom “go out” on her shift. She could have done it legally the way the script was written. Only because the nurse going off shift alerted us (and the VNA person in charge of sending MORE meds to the house thought it was unnecessary) was this woman stopped and removed from the home. Mom left this earth at God’s calling the next morning.
We filed a formal complaint - but it is peer review - and the script saved her license.
There are many horror stories out there - it will only get worse!
Now, in the US, we have hospices. In theory, a hospice is for someone who is at death's door. The hospital has done what it can, and there is no longer any real point to being in the ICU. Perhaps it's best to go home, be with family, and just pass on. In our modern society, that's about the most "natural" way anyone can die.
However, there is the matter of pain management. No one wants to see a loved one in pain, so when the hospice people start the morphine drip, it just seems like a kindness. What could be wrong?
Well, in my experience, hospice ends up amounting to assisted suicide. The morphine drip is increased day by day until it affects the breathing, and the patient dies. It almost seems like policy.
Maybe, if the patient really is going anyway, then this is a painless way to go. But I have a hard time with it. I think the medical establishment really is killing people in America.
The woman writing the first complaining paragraph would rather her mother live in excruciating bone cancer pain, than live pain-free in her final days.
People are born. People live. People die. Accept it.
So she was not a lucid as the daughter wanted her to be. She was pain free. Does this woman respect the concept of quality of life?
I have interviewed a number of family members who objected to hospice care. In every case, they were the sons and daughters who had ignored their parents and grandparents most of their adult life, but then objected when that parent exercised their freedom to die pain free.
My mother had surgery when she was 84. During surgery, she had a major stroke and could no longer get around on her own. We put her in a nursing home for recovery. The nursing home, eventually, suggested that we move her into the regular nursing part of the home where they wanted her to stay. My mother couldn’t get around on her own but was mentally sharp. She wouldn’t say anything but I could tell that she hated the idea. We eventually moved her into a families home where she could be with her grand daughter, greatgrand son and great, greatgrand son.
The nursing home didn’t like this idea and the nursing home doctor said that she couldn’t be moved. I told them I wanted a second opinion and they changed their minds. My mother lasted another two years before she passed on, but was totally happy. In the nursing home, my mother knew that she would be lonely and alone. We didn’t want that.
It’s not easy taking care of someone like this but we figured that it wasn’t easy for her to raise us either. Now it was our turn to take care of her. Having her in our homes again was amazing. You wouldn’t believe the love that will over ride the job. Think twice, three times, before placing anyone in a nursing home.
GET A WILL TO LIVE AT THE FOLLOWING SITE:
http://www.nrlc.org/euthanasia/willtolive/docs/new%20york.rev0309.pdf
It’s better than a Living Will, and has one for each state.
Anyone truly interested in this topic should read “The Nazi Doctors” by Robert J. Lifton.
My father cancer alerted me to who aggressive these hospitals/hospices systems are .
The hospice kept harassing my step mom about letting them in the door.
I finally called this place and warned them I was going to contact state licensing board and Medicare if they continued to harass my family.
These vultures who were desperate to fill a empty hospice bed as well to get my family to switch their Medicare coverage to that Medicare hospice coverage ( a big mistake by the way).
By the way, ,my father passed away two years later at home in his bed.
Been there, done that with three close relatives.
It is assisted suicide, without question. One can wrestle with the moral argument all you want, but we have it here now, and have had it for a very long time.
Along with relieving pain, and relieving the sick of consciousness by-and-large, morphine depresses respiration until you die.
The hospice system, in my opinion only, is set up for a couple of reasons. One is a delivery system for morphine, another is to help loved ones of the sick through some of the more difficult parts of caring for the terminally sick, and another is to keep doctors a step away from the process.
If a doctor is administering toxic doses of morphine, it’s a violation of the Hippocratic Oath besides being a liability issue. When nurses do it, they are just doing their job.
I’ve got mixed feelings about the hospice process, but it’s better than dying in a hospital - and was the rational choice of 3 loved ones.
This is indeed a very tricky issue.
I think it is important for a FAMILY MEMBER to be in charge of medication and be the ultimate boss, NOT the doctor.
My beloved grandmother-in-law, in Europe, was 94 and at the end of her long, full life, in a retirement home, and she was suffering from some kind of pneumonia. Breathing was hard, she was coughing a lot, and in her sleep, she was choking. It was HELL for family members to see her lying there gasping.
The doctor decided to up her morphine just to remove some of her pain and discomfort. I think everyone knew that it would cause her to relax so much that she might not be breathing a whole lot longer. This proved to be true — I do not think she lived 24 hours from that point. Every family member felt this was the best thing. This was not assisted suicide as far as the FAMILY knew and the family did approve of the doctor upping the meds to increase the comfort of a beautiful old woman.
We will never know for sure his intent, and we don’t need to. She went to heaven and she was better off for it. It was definitely her time to go.
placemark
AMMO LIST: OBAMACARE’s WAR ON SENIORS & BUSINESS
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2613747/posts
Socialized Medicine Round Up thread
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2613678/posts
dealing with this now...think i am in a war zone.
There’s a misperception that pain medication kills people in hospice. While it does put them into a drug induced coma, it is not the agent that kills them. They die from the disease that was killing them anyway, but without the agony of the pain from the disease.
Two years ago, the hospice in Rock Hill, S.C. was a godsend for my dad and his family. My dad lived an active life up until two weeks before he died. As with so many people now after heart attacks, his congestive heart failure eventually could no longer be mitigated with diuretics and other drugs. After a week in the hospital, the doctors said that there was nothing more that could be done for him.
The last week of his life was in a hospice where his lungs gradually filled with fluid and he would have suffered the agony of drowning to death slowly over a course of several days. Instead, morphine was increased as he showed any signs of distress until eventually he was in a drug induced coma. He finally drowned to death without feeling any pain.
Thanks for the thread & the article referenced.
My mom died Oct 10 AT HOME..after I cared for her here as an invalid for 18 years. As a former Hospice & Hospital chaplain I knew that her wishes to be at home etc were extremely valid & I am so grateful I was able to honor this wish.
Now it is much worse than it was then. I will be the first to admit much depends on the individual docs/nurses.. but they rotate & are overtaxed. Finding an ombudsmen for your family member is a joke. I was on the Bio-ethical committee & the horror stories there are beyond the pale. Always the first consideration was “does the person have insurance & HOW MUCH”. Treatment choices went from there.
Yes, no hospital can refuse treatment, but WHAT treatment?
Well, I gave up a lot of years of my life goals & plans but it was the right thing to do.
and yes, the house is empty & lonely now