LogFAQs > #968344463

Smackems posted...

My grandma is on hospice and isn't at the end of her life and doesn't have less that 6 months or a year

Its not the only qualification, but its a major one. You can be put on hospice if you don't want to pursue more aggressive treatments for a disease that could take longer than six months or if they are in mid-late stages of dementia. We have had some people on for 2 years.

KaZooo posted...

Can only wonder how that goes, whether or not you every really get used to things.

I remember the hospice nurse for my dad. I guess she had to go through the formality of asking him if he wanted morphine with his water. He turned it down, but when she was getting the water and cup near me, she told me she had to do so anyway because of how much coughing was escalating with his lactic acidosis.

Just crazy that things like this, is supposed to be a day in and out job.

I saw much worse things in the hospital in the ICU than I see in hospice. People that are brain dead being kept alive by machines when they will die immediately if taken off of them, but family drag their feet any they stay on them for months and months and there's no dignity in it. I am OK with someone passing peacefully, but after the 50th or so non-peaceful passing I saw in the ICU I couldn't do it anymore.

People like to be stoic and play down their pain until it gets really high and difficult to bring it down, that's why we want to try to keep them on a baseline dose so it doesn't get extreme.