I practice medicine. Many of my patients are elderly and in ill health. Hospice is supposed to be for people who are not expected to live longer than 6 months.
Many of my chronically ill patients who accepted hospice care died within days to weeks. One died before the hospice nurses could get to him. Another one with terminal chronic obstructive pulmonary disease got kicked out of hospice after 8 months. He died 4 months later. Just like life, every death is different
I am fortunate in that the geographical area I live in is very Red and still adheres to Christian, American values. We see death as a part of life and don’t try to hurry it along. It is still very hard to see a loved one get ready to leave this life. I fully expect that there will be a lot of hospice horror stories coming out of blue areas with large populations of “progressives” and forty-seven percenters. Heck, there probably already are.
My father died last year. He had Alzheimer’s disease but it was the recurrence of his prostate cancer that finally took him. He had recorded advance directives that specifically forbade any kind of intervention other than “comfort care”. When he started to get really sick the hospice staff gave him regular injections of morphine. Eventually he didn’t need them because he stopped drinking and died 4 days later. He was “on hospice” for a total of 12 days. In my opinion, he died a good death. His suffering was minimal and he did not linger.
I would advise everyone who reads this to record advance directives (a “living will”) while you are healthy so that your family will be aware of your wishes and ready to fight for you should it come to that.
My living will says to take every measure to keep me alive no matter what and to try to have my brain installed into a new body, preferably a young clone....