This hospice is a joke
The agony of this experience just never ends. I arrived this morning to the sound of my dad howling, no wailing, in pain. He began this waling around 3 am, waking up everyone with one of the baby monitors in the house. The haunting sound of that pitiful wail will be with me the rest of my life. It took HOURS to get him calm and resting again. And when he breathes there is this raspy sound.
I don’t know if I can bear this for him. All of us are tired, none of us has slept more than an hour or two a day in the last five days. My sisters are caring for dad almost around the clock, giving meds, bathing, soothing, rubbing lotions, etc. He hasn’t opened his eyes in two days. Is that part of this dying process? Or is it because the lamebrains at Southern Care told us the drops in the bottle were for his eyes…when it was actually morphine…who knows? The nurses they send are about as compassionate as a worker at McDonald’s. So far there has been no counselor, no social worker, no chaplain. And Dad is suffering. We are so helpless right now, we just don’t know what to do. Somebody please, tell us how to make this nightmare stop. We’re all dying with him and hospice is NO help. I hate this company with an ungodly passion at this moment. What a crock, they were supposed to help us get through this. We’ve never been with someone who’s dying before. This is our father, our hero, he’s had so much pain and suffering in his life already. Can’t we do SOMETHING? Why does he have to go through all this just to be able to die in peace?
I am so sick I can’t keep food down, and I can’t stop the trembling. We are all so battle-weary we can’t think straight, can’t remember things, we’re in a fog.
June 28, 2017 @ 1:33 pm
I am going through this exact experience, down to the sickness and trembling. Where did I ever get the idea that hospice care meant a smooth morphine trip to the heavens, and that my Dad’s conscious mind would have checked out? So much went wrong with this hospital. They keep telling me he’s resting peacefully, and when I get there, he too is wailing. When it’s my time, I’d rather be pushed off a cliff.
August 11, 2017 @ 5:57 am
I brought hospice in after Dad fell almost 3 weeks ago. I am the only caregiver and I have a sister and stepbrother I have not heard from or seen in 20 + years. I thought hospice was help. What a joke! They want the caregiver to cater toward their solutions and they aren’t solving anything but making things worse instead. They are suppose to make comfort at the end of life..HA! Me and Dad have been living in hell ever since I signed up. Their antipsychotic drugs..what a joke. Drugs to make Dad sleep. I just spent 3 days and 3 nights with about 3 hours of sleep to the point of where I was experiencing heart palpitations and seeing things with profuse sweating because their joke drugs made Dad act crazy day and night. I was accused of making that up by the administrator. Everytime a nurse came out Dad was asleep.. but after they left..world war 3 started again with Dad’s craziness.
Then they want to throw their authority around and tell me what to do in my house. No go! I will tell them in a minute what they can do with their witches brew drugs. No meds were given since 6 last night..Dad has never been so calm. Polypharmacy is a good way to murder people..This is sad and I am completely pissed off with hospice.
May 9, 2018 @ 8:32 pm
I’m so sorry you had to deal with all that. I so totally understand what you went through with hospice. My mom was in an Adult Family Home when the Home Healthcare and Hospice who were coming in to take care of her once a week decided she needed to go on hospice care. My mom was paraplegic and had a lot of issues. However, she was alert and eating and doing things she could do and we didn’t see why they were putting her on hospice. They convinced me that it was “best for my mom” to be on it because she was going to die. So I agreed, believing they would be more helpful.
The first thing they did was take her off all the medications she was on that helped with the spasms she had, and diabetes meds, and everything else she was on and put her on morphine. She got pneumonia and they wouldn’t give her anything that would help ease her breathing.
Toward the end of 6 weeks after she was on hospice care she was so bad she couldn’t talk very well or do anything. She was in severe pain. Hospice tried to get me to withhold food and water from her. I wouldn’t authorize it. I couldn’t add to the misery and I had promised her before she got sick that I would never withhold food or water from her and let anyone thirst or starve her to death. She did, however, get to a point a few days before she passed that she couldn’t swallow so that was when she didn’t get anything to eat or drink. They wanted to stop her food and drink 2 weeks before she died.
Three days before she passed, she begged me to take her home. I thought she was talking about letting her die but she wanted to come back to my house (where she used to live before I couldn’t physically take care of her anymore and had to put her in the home). I decided to pack her up and bring her home. I honestly thought hospice would be there to help us through the end but they were nowhere to be found except over the phone. We had no idea what was going on and what we needed to do.
I cried in their ears telling them we needed help and someone to be there with us. Their response? “Give her more morphine keep her sleeping, it will keep her out of pain” They ordered her be given a dose of morphine every half hour until she was gone. They said it would be better for her and for us to do that. I asked why someone wouldn’t come to be there with us. Their response? “Because there are too many other people needing the same help and hospice care isn’t like it is in the movies. The family just calls us when it’s over.”
Once my mom passed (she died a day and a half after we brought her home), we called to let them know she was gone and it took over an hour and a half for them to get here to verify it and remove all the apparatus to get her ready for the funeral home to come get her. After the woman did all that she called the funeral home and told them to come after my mom. Then this woman saw some of the things we were using for my mom that we hadn’t used up yet and asked if she could have the stuff “for other people needing these supplies”. I was hesitant but also didn’t want to keep all of that stuff anyway and gave the stuff to her. She took it and left.
All of this was devastating to deal with. Don’t trust it’s Hospice is a JOKE! If I ever have to deal with another family member dying, I will NOT call on hospice. They are no help and they just want to keep your loved ones sleeping and on morphine and dying as quick as it can happen. I just don’t understand why it’s like that. 🙁 The only way you’ll get hospice care like in the movies is if you are filthy rich and can afford to pay for one to stay there at the end with you and your loved one while your loved one is dying.
R.H.
June 7, 2018 @ 5:51 pm
R.H. My mother only lasted a week on hospice. It is a joke!!!!!! They take advantage of grieving families and dope their loved ones up until they die. I am sure if we did toxicology report she would have been overdosed. Cancer did not kill her yet but morphine did.
June 7, 2018 @ 5:46 pm
My mother had lymphoma then turned to renal cell carcinoma then matastisized to liver. Doctor said for hospice since all treatments failed. My dad, sister and I sat at the table with my mother on Friday may 25 2018 and the hospice “nurses” or “aids”came out Sunday and went like gangbusters with the liquid morphine and liquid lorazepam saying need to get on top of the pain???? My mother had been throwing up and her throat was sore and she was awake and whispered she was not in pain. She also was sipping water out of straw. So in they kept giving her like clock work the liquids and knocked my mother out like a horse. Only a week went by and the following Saturday evening June 2 2018 my mother passed. This was not dignified in any way. This was kavorkian at its best. My mother deserved better than this. We are not nurses and did what we were told by hospice we were all grieving and they took advantage. Anyone wanting hospice please take control of the medicine dosage and make sure you make your loved one comfortable and not on morphine overdose!!!!!!! I will regret seeing my mother like this until the day I die.
June 7, 2018 @ 11:22 pm
Hi Tina,
I know exactly what you mean. I wish we had not followed the hospice directions in pumping my mom full of morphine. I know she would rather have been awake the last part so she could have said a few things but the morphine just kept her sleeping. My daughter has felt really guilty because she thinks that she killed my mom. Only a few minutes before my mom passed, my daughter had given her a dose of morphine and my mom choked on it. We had been directed to give the morphine every half hour for several hours. I’m wondering if they were directing us to give the morphine to my mom like that to overdose her like what you think happened with your mom. 🙁 Hospice is definitely not something I would suggest to anyone for their loved ones! You probably won’t recommend them to anyone either. I sure hope I never have to deal with a dying loved one again. I don’t think I could handle it. :'( At least not any time soon.
R.H.