hospice care

thought i would throw this out for you guys, it helped me immensely, i figured it might help some of you


as some of you know, my aging mother in law is living with us

years ago she had gotten diagnosed with alzheimers but around december last year she developed a brain infection

it was about 11 or so at night, and i heard her snoring (for lack of a better term) so i send the wife down to check up on her and when she did we found that she was non responsive and having seizures

we called 911 and they brought her to a nearby hospital

while she was there she was diagnosed with a brain infection i can not even pronounce (i believe it had a 75% mortality rate) and spend 2 weeks in the hospital

when she got released, somehow someone turned us onto "palliative care"
we signed her up on this service, and they looked at her record and said "hospice is a better fit got her"

now, my wife had the hardest time making the decision to do that because to her it felt like she was giving up on her mom
(one of the requirements for hospice is a prognosis of less then 6 months to live)

however, since she has been on hospice, we could not have been happier with the care she has received

the first thing they did was change the approach from "quantity of life" to "quality of life"
this cut her pill load down to 25% was it was before and her body reacted very well to that
the also stopped the weekly blood test which were a real hassle trying to get her to the hospital each week to draw blood

and this was priceless, to have someone say "hey, it is ok to not try to force her to take her drugs every night"
or "she will eat when he body needs it, you are not being bad caretakers by not forcing her to eat when she doesnt want too"

just to have someone come in and make those decisions for us was such a relief

now, because of the way insurance works, they will cover either hospice, or the quantity of life approach, but not both

one of the things this means is when her hand started hurting a few days ago, we couldnt just take her to the hospital for X rays because it would not be covered

so, we talked to our hospice nurse and she had a mobile X ray tech show up at the house to take the pictures


now, having said all this, if you are dealing with a loved one who is nearing the end of life, and you need a hand
look into hospice

and even if they are not nearing the end of their live, check into the palliative care they also cover kind of care, and often move patients around between them, and it really takes a load off the family who is acting as a caregiver, without being really equipped to do so