Part VI Some Hospice Care Providers Hasten Death

Typical un-named source anti-hospice materiel from a group that advocates prolonging life no matter how much pain the terminally ill patient is enduring. Let them experience the pain for 24, or 2400 hours, then possibly re-evaluate their position.

In my family's experience, even if you have no pain, hospitals will try to push you into hospice and deny treatment if they deem you "too old" or "too far along." If you as a perfectly coherent patient refuse it and plead for treatment, they will refuse to help you. They push those narcotics because they hasten your demise. Many people in our family have battled cancer, and this is what we have witnessed firsthand.

In my family's experience, even if you have no pain, hospitals will try to push you into hospice and deny treatment if they deem you "too old" or "too far along."

If a patient is beyond a point of reasonable expectation of recovery, hospice care, not the hospital is the place to be. A hospital is a great place if you are going to get well. It is a horrible place to die.

If you as a perfectly coherent patient refuse it and plead for treatment, they will refuse to help you. They push those narcotics because they hasten your demise.

When there is a treatment with a reasonable expectation of cure, even a very slight one, hospitals offer it, even encourage it. When there is no viable curative treatment, they suggest Hospice for palliative care.

One of the saddest thing to see in a hospital is a patient who knows they have led a full live, one who realizes that death is part of their life process, who is ready to go, being pushed into painful "treatments" by family members. It's often a child who ignored an elderly parent for decades who now wants to "save them."

The morphine is not intended to hasten death. It makes it much less painful. That is what a dying person wants.

A hospital is a great place if you are going to get well. It is a horrible place to die.

It sure is, because they make it so. They punish you for fighting on. The right answer would be for the hospital to take an open-access hospice approach. Instead, it's all or nothing. You either accept the comforts of hospice without treatment, or they punish you with the discomforts for seeking treatment. Fortunately, a couple of insurance companies now offer an open-access hospice option, and hopefully more will do the same.

What's sad is when a patient himself/herself wants to continue to fight, and the doctors and hospital staff are trying to push the patient to give up, especially when the doctors made mistakes they're trying to cover up.

The morphine is not intended to hasten death. It makes it much less painful. That is what a dying person wants.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, morphine does not have the wonderful qualities you describe. If your liver is compromised, it will have a terrible effect on you. But, if you're not in pain, the good news is, there's no reason to have a narcotic. The bad news is, everyone has been conditioned to believe every patient with cancer has pain and that narcotics are necessary. If you're not in pain, narcotics make matters worse, as doctors of internal medicine know.

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