This weekend, I’m flying out to Houston to visit my
ninety-seven year old grandmother.
Granted, it is not a great time to fly right now with all the crazy
things going on in the news… but this trip was planned a while back and it may be
the last time I get to spend time with my grandma. She now has end stage dementia and I feel it may be time to
introduce the idea of hospice to the extended family. I am approaching this topic with some hesitation because I
realize there may be a lot of misconceptions and fear associated with hospice.
So the basic 101 about hospice that I hope to convey
include:
- - most patients could probably benefit from being
put on hospice a lot sooner than the family realizes
- - just because a patient is on hospice, doesn’t
necessarily mean that death is days or even weeks away
o in
fact, some perk up and improve so much from the extra attention, they may even
get disqualified from continued service
-
- goal is comfort for the patient and support for
the family
o to
make the patient as comfortable as possible with as much dignity as possible…
so that the days can be spent hassle-free without a lot of extraordinary
measures and invasive procedures
o to
give family and caregivers support, encouragement, and a resource from
professionals with tremendous experience with end of life issues
It will be challenging to convey all this with a language
and cultural barrier, but we’ll see how it goes.
In the meanwhile, I hope to spend some quality time just
being with my grandmother. Simple
things like the sound of ones voice or the feel of ones hand…
can go a long way in communicating love and offering comfort. I also hope to give some relief and
provide emotional and physical support to my aging aunt who is the primary
caregiver… and the same to my other aunt who carries a lot of the logistical
and physical responsibilities associated with the care.
Leaving my four children behind on this short weekend trip
is not easy. I am forced to rely
on other caregivers to manage the day to day logistics and needs of my
kids. At the same time, I look forward to sleeping in! I admit I am a
“control-freak” and often feel the need to call or text multiple times a day
just to find out what is going on and whether things are smooth. It so happens that my phone
developed an issue and I cannot currently make calls or receive calls and texts
on the cellular network. I am
sitting here on the plane typing this hoping to fix the problem the minute I
land. I realize that at the end of
the day, even if things are not going as smooth as I like back home… what can I
do? Maybe not having contact for a
while can be a good lesson for me to let go and let be. Oh… let’s see if I can do that.
So back to my earlier comment about it being a crazy time to
fly… at least on this flight from Philly… no one seems to be acutely ill or
overly worried about contracting anything =)
It was interesting to learn that even though patients are on hospice care that they have a chance of improving in so much that they are disqualified from the hospice program. Since the goal of hospice is to make the patient feel as comfortable as possible I am sure that one of the reasons you see situations where they improve is because they would have more interactions with friends and family. It has been researched that supportive and relationships actually help strengthen you physically as well as emotionally. senior care services
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