Hospice Care: Help During End Stages of Life
One day while I was working at my newspaper job, the phone rang. It was the head nurse at Dad’s nursing home.
“Carol, we did it!” she said. “Your father’s going on hospice. Can the provider call you at work? If you can do the paperwork now, then we’ll get him started.”
A hospice social worker called me at work and even came up to my office for the initial interview. I did the paperwork and met the hospice representatives at Dad’s nursing home later that day.
Breaking the News That a Loved One Is Going on Hospice
After we won the fight for hospice, my main concern became how to tell Mom. Hospice means impending death to most people. And, of course, that is what they do – they help people die naturally while minimizing bothersome symptoms (like pain) as much as possible. However, telling my mother that Dad was going on hospice would be difficult. I even asked the social worker if we could “skip that part”! I can’t believe I asked that, but I wanted to spare my mother the emotional pain of knowing that dad was dying. I meant well, but I think I was trying to spare myself some discomfort as well. One of the great things about hospice providers is that they have heard it all before. I wasn’t…
Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories. “For anyone having to walk the last segments of life with a loved one, read this.” …Delores
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