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.
You hit the nail on the head with what you said. The other scenario is a guilt complex some people have that they were the ones that “pulled the trigger”.
I share the sentiment of this author based on my experience. You make a ridiculous statement about hospice being some sort of all knowing, all wonderful entity as if it can do no wrong.
The author here reflects how her mother rapidly went from fully functioning independent one day to heavily medicated and out of it the next day, and dead a week later. I agree this may be a case of overmedication. We are dealing with sensitive issues here and you wildly make judgment about it being anti hospice. In my case, I was deeply troubled by the experience where each and every question and each visit just turned into a ‘turn up the meds’ response. I have read quite a bit about this type of situation and it does seem to be standard policy. We can’t operate like hospice is right just because it is hospice, and more than the common outlook that the government is always going to do what’s right.
Cool. Can I decide when you die?
Although this post has been here for quite some time now and may not even be viewed anymore I still feel compelled to reply. I actually want to clarify something. I never said that I’d rather for my mom to be alive and in horrible pain than to be gone to an eternal resting place of peace. As a matter of fact even though she was highly medicated she still complained of pain. So she wasn’t pain free during the end. My point was this...when SHE signed up for hospice, SHE did not know that SHE was signing her death certificate. Yes, her cancer was terminal eventually. Yes, we all knew she was going to die someday in the near future. But none of us (including her) knew that hospice was going to intentionally overdose her and treat us like we were uneducated idiots that wouldn’t know the difference. I felt like we were mislead and that if she had known that this was going to happen then maybe she wouldn’t have made the same choice. I guess we will never know. I always supported my mother’s decisions whether I agreed with them or not. She knew what was best for her, not me. Of course I loved her and I wanted to hold on to her as long as possible. But I’m not selfish and I did respect her wishes, ALWAYS!!! I realize every case is different, and I just wanted anyone else having to make the same decisions to be aware of the things they don’t tell you. OUR experience was no different than legalized euthanasia.