Posted on 05/04/2018 6:09:05 AM PDT by June2
Just had a family member enrolled into hospice. So far everyone and everything has been great. Today we’re being visited by a social worker. Why are they needed and what questions should I have for them?
I know that. It’s criminal.
You could not be more wrong, setting judgmentalism aside.
Not all terminal illnesses are without terrible pain. This is the purpose of morphine: to allow your loved one to pass without suffering and to make oneself ready for the passing into what’s inevitable.
You probably will not understand it until you give hospice yourself. Hopefully you can prepare yourself by volunteering at a facility where there are many awaiting by themselves.
LOL...I miss the days when nuns could be both extremely bad and extremely good...:)
(I never really had bad ones except for one, but I knew people who did!)
All humor aside, I found Hospice to be a real Godsend.
My father passed away in early November after being on hospice for 4 months. We could not have done it without their help. Having a family member who is dying in the home is extremely stressful. Hospice has a full team of players who help the family during this time including chaplains, social workers, health care aides and the nurse in charge. We took full advantage of the social worker to help de-stress ourselves and answer any questions/challenges we had about care. She even came during the actual dying process (it took dad about 3 days to pass) to talk to us and help us through it. My brother did NOT handle dad’s illness and death well and she did help him. You also have to understand some families don’t handle extreme stress well or are dysfunctional to begin with (think: elder abuse, kids taking money or other advantage of elderly parents, all kinds of crazy stuff)....so social workers to have to deal with all kinds of things to help families and of course, protect the patient. We had one volunteer military visitor for my father tell me (privately and on the phone) that he saw many instances where the kids didn’t give a crap about their dying parent. I was shocked at first...and then I realized, they deal with all kinds of people and have probably seen every dysfunction in the book.
Also, the social worker is an excellent resource if you need to arrange respite care (dad had 5 days in a local nursing home to give my mother a break), and also information on local agencies if you need to bring in additional outside help. He/she can be a walking encyclopedia for information. My mother fought tooth and nail about getting extra help until October, when she finally relented and let me hire an aide to keep an eye on dad in the evenings a couple times a week. He was always trying to escape from bed. She was a huge help!
I went through Hospice with my Father in December of 2016.
My feeling about this are that I have a number of Ethical and Moral problems with it.
For all the discussion on this site about State Sponsored Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia I always find it interesting how many people praise Hospice. When in reality it is nothing more Assisted Murder in my opinion.
Once you enter in Hospice it is a process that seems to take over. Their protocols are to withhold food and water, while at the same time start to administer Morphine at regular intervals, like every two hours.
Basically the body build up Morphine and the it can’t process the dosage and they die. It’s pretty much Murder no matter how you slice it.
It is a legalized form of Murder, Assisted Suicide, or Euthanasia, take your pick. I find a great deal of Hypocrisy in all of it.
So if your putting a loved one in Hospice then go into with your eyes open as to what it really is.
Withholding food and water was the specific protocol for your father, based on his condition. Presumably, at the time hospice began medicating and withholding nutrition, your father had not been sitting up, interacting with people, feeding himself, and not in one of the stages near death. I’m sorry for your loss, by the way.
Every case is different. My mom had food and water withheld because she was heavily medicated and rapidly dying (rapidly dying even without medication). Once someone has reached a certain stage near death, food and water are taken away because there is a risk of aspiration, which can be horrific and traumatic in ways a peaceful death for a loved one are not within hospice. And that is the goal of hospice: a peaceful death for the terminally ill and comfort for loved ones and the dying.
My uncle is currently in the care of a hospice team. He has been for several months. He eats, drinks, etc. When he reaches that point where he’s rapidly dying, food and water will be withheld and medications will be administered to keep him comfortable and peaceful.
My point is, hospice doesn’t starve and dehydrate people to death. By the time food and water are withheld, the person is already at an end stage of life and neither needs, nor should have either.
My father ate right up until he couldn’t swallow anymore, not even frozen ice (he would cough and the danger was aspiration at that point) and that was about 3 days before he died. Every patient is different as well as their sufferings :( Luckily, he really had no pain. Some cancer patients have terrible pain, fluid retention, etc. We were encouraged to start giving small doses of morphine during the actual 3 day dying process to help with breathing issues as it does open the airways. He never went into a coma and we could tell he heard us right up until he died (he’d flicker his eyelids or flap a hand if you called his name).
Well, these nuns were nursing nuns not teaching nuns, lol. I had some doozies in grammar school!
You’re so right about every patient being different. Some are comatose, then suddenly active before death, others quiet but responsive to touch, or comatose until the end. It’s never easy, though, but hospice and other palliative care efforts are wonderful. I’m sorry for your loss, but glad you were there with your father until the end, and he did not suffer.
Thank you all for your replies, advice and prayers! I appreciate your taking the time to reply. It’s so helpful to hear what others have experienced, especially when these involve significant life events.
Thanks again my FRiends!
You want to end your life? Fine, do it. But don't ask others to help you along. We've been down this slope with abortion where it was going to be safe and rare. We ended up with it being murderously barbaric in Holocaust type numbers.
One of my favorite stories is related to work...I work in IT, and I did something on a server I shouldn’t have in order to try and fix it, and got in over my head. I had to call the experts, and a very dark skinned black woman showed up at my door to discuss it with me.
I explained what I had done, apologized, and said I wouldn’t do it again, then held out my hand exposing the back of it, and handed her a wooden ruler.
She grabbed my hand, turned it palm up,and gently whacked me on the palm!
I nearly fell over...that was a thing the nuns used to do (my brother once told me they did it so it didn’t leave marks) and I hadn’t thought of that in decades!
She grinned and said she had been raised by nuns at a missionary in Africa!
For all the discussion on this site about State Sponsored Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia I always find it interesting how many people praise Hospice. When in reality it is nothing more Assisted Murder in my opinion.
...
I couldn’t disagree more. My mom died a year ago today in hospice.
In her case she was given all the food and water she wanted. She had someone with her 24 hours a day. Workers in the rehab hospital would stop by to see her and they could even make her laugh. She kept sleeping more and more until she no longer woke up. At that point she was no longer given any medications. They weren’t necessary and she was able to pass away peacefully in her sleep.
The hospice service was invaluable.
I somehow evaded that! The worse thing was that once your parents knew you had been punished, you were punished all over again.
What most people do not realize until they have gone through the process of dealing with an elder immutably headed for death; is that around most hospitals and around *every* hospital in any kind of populated area is a vast and yet almost completely unseen population of caregivers; paid and volunteer. And you do not see the volunteers and the paid folks who enter the scene after your elder enters hospice, who might outnumber the paid professionals by maybe 3:1 or even 5:1. Until your elder enters hospice you simply never see them or know they are there. I found it remarkable.
Anyway. The combination of you observing their activities, relieving you of a good deal of the worry because you see your elder is in really good hands, and the relief they provide the elder, it’s just about the best outcome imaginable. Except it’s not really imaginable because you cannot see how good it ends up working out from your pre-hospice condition of angst.
It all ends producing a reality that’s 100 times as good as you think it will be and that is why 99% of people are enormously happy with the process. You absolutely do not need to overthink it.
My medicine chest is empty, but thanks for caring. I’m simply saying that home hospice allows a person to die naturally, surrounded by loved ones, in a comfortable place, and without pain. When your kidneys and liver have failed, it’s otherwise gonna hurt.
I think anyone who is considering it as a suicide vehicle is in for a surprise.
I totally agree with you.
My mother lasted about 2 weeks after being given her terminal diagnosis. She returned to the hospice part of her Catholic nursing home. I fed her most of the time - mostly vanilla ice cream which she liked. I sat by her bed for hours, reading the New York Post to her and telling her that John Boehner had resigned. (She hated him!) She was given everything she wanted which was almost nothing. As someone else said, she slept more and more and more. I did have the nuns put on a Easy Listening radio station because she always liked that stuff.
That was it. She died quietly. No one abused or mistreated her or withheld anything from her.
Sorry for your loss. The first year is tough.
I was mainly a psych nurse at the end. If there was a comfortable place to go as peacable as possible it would be a hospice. The people who work there are indeed as close to angelic as humanly possible. I do hope and pray these times work out and your loved one is content to the end.
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