Did Hospice rush your loved ones death?

I haven't commented in a while. I think I get more help from this website than I do going to a grief counselor because I read that others have been in a similar situation and are just as angry. The skilled nursing facility where my dad had been for rehab ( I have already written the longer version of the circumstances) I believe killed my dad with morphine and Ativan within a few hours after I signed the DNR. I would really like to tell some of the caregivers and doctors at the facility that I know what they were up to ( to be polite about it) but I know it would do no good just perhaps give me a little satisfaction. I don't think I will ever get over blaming myself for trusting them and for what they did to him. I was very emotionial at the time when the nurse came in to give him morphine a few hours before and I said "no". He was already sedated with medication and asleep. The head of the nursing staff came in in a few minutes with another nurse and called me out of the room and pounded her fist at me telling me "it is the law". They said it was comfort care. Four hours later he was dead! About a week later asked for his list of medications for the two days before he died. They had started giving him morphine and Ativan every hour and kept increasing the strength until he passed. They had given him morphine the night before for the first time and he questioned what they were doing and the dosage and that they assured him that he would receive no more medication until the morning. That was about midnight. The next morning they gave him oxycontin, I can't remember the dosage. He apparently developed apnea in the afternoon. They called me at work and I immediately went there. I would have seen him in a couple of hours
as I did everyday, regardless. Anyway, That's when 5 staff members surrounded me insisting I sign a DNR. Four hours later he was gone. I am so angry and stressed!!

Pbfordad, where is the longer version please? I'd like to read it, if you can remember roughly where and when you posted?

flowgo -- thank you! I lost my mother under similar circumstances. I was physically removed from her hospital room, when they came with the morphine "kill" shot! I was only a teenager at the time, but still...I knew what had just happened.
Yet, in retrospect, I do not hold hospice solely to blame. The bottom line appears to be the real culprit -- $$.
Lingering patients are always costly. Exorbitant pricing makes even a short hospital stay, an unrecoverable cost. So, it's easy to see why hospitals and nursing care facilities would embrace hospice care, because it affords them a financial workaround.
The facility may still house the patient, but has essentially subcontracted them out.
Now, the loss becomes a gain -- for both the facility, and the new caregiver.
How?

Well, hospice is essentially "renting" space for the patient.
Still, how can that be a boon for both businesses? (yes, they are businesses!)

Enter government; you know -- the folks who write the laws that protect us?
Yeah, those folks...who can usually afford to avoid hospice care for themselves, and their own families.
(I have yet to hear of any ranking official being put under hospice care. Have you?)

So, government attempts to solve the problem of terminally ill patients, by ordaining hospice to weed those patients out of the healthcare system. Hospice is granted a stipend (our tax dollars hard at work?) purported to cover a dying patient for up to 6 months of care.
On its face, this idea would appear to make sense. And it might work well, IF it were possible to predict exactly how long a terminal patient will last.

However, such predictions aren't always correct. And so, the long-lingering patient again becomes....a financial problem. And hospice services must be very careful about which patients to accept.

We already know that we're all fallible human beings...and doctors are no exception.
So, just because a patient is declared terminally ill....we can't always be sure.
Then too, the hospice now caring for that not-terminal-enough patient is facing financial loss, should the patient's life be prolonged beyond that 6-month funding window.

Conversely, the short-lived hospice patient is a financial gain for hospice, since the unused funds remain in their coffers....supposedly, to go toward the care of the aforementioned lingerers.
But again -- we're discussing a business...with employees, drug costs, rent, etc
.
So, how do you maintain the business...and still make a profit? (an ice-cold term, under these circumstances!)

By choosing the patient most likely to die within the shortest amount of time, so as not to exceed the government funding, and to actually leave behind an unused balance.

Could this setup actually tempt some hospices into hastening their patients' deaths?

Might the contracting hospital/nursing facility look the other way, as their own bottom line is involved, as well?

And finally, could some hospices even resort to other means of making a profit -- like the sale of human organs, for example?

I know that this post will stimulate some controversy. In fact, I'm hoping for it!

It's hard to say how the new healthcare system will effect the "death industry."
My guess -- it will only make matters worse for those who cannot afford to die under their own terms.

pbfordad -- I'm sorry for your loss.
But please, do not carry any guilt at signing the DNR. I have seen the way they pressure family into doing just that -- and sadly...worse.

I'm reading so many heart-wrenching posts, here. Many of us, it seems, are harboring varying degrees of guilt -- and all of it, undeserved!

Any caring human being is most vulnerable (I'm using that word a lot, lately) when facing the loss of their loved ones.

Just like in the old days of the traveling salesman -- a foot in the door almost insures a sale!
And certain hospice workers are trained to do just that -- get that foot in.
Their business is death..and some are very good at it.

I'm not saying that most hospice workers are so calloused. There are wonderful, caring people who work in palliative care. I have known a few, and would trust them with my own life.

But there are also stages to hospice care , and workers trained specifically to handle those stages.
Yes, there are "closers," too....and they are the actual "foot in the door" folks.

I recall once watching a group of them surrounding a poor patient's bed. At the time, it appeared to me to be a loving circle of friends and family....attempting to bring comfort to the ailing patient.
I did not know the man they were "embracing," but something about it....something just didn't feel quite right.
Perhaps, it was because the gathered comforters seemed a little too euphoric for the ominous scene?

Years later, while attending a child's birthday party at a well-known eatery, the reality finally hit me.
Here was a celebration of a life.
But what I'd witnessed years earlier was hardly a celebration of the man's life -- but of it's ending!

It takes a particular type of person to do what I now call "The Chucky" celebration.
I'm sure that not all of them are so morbidly enthralled with the job.
But some are. And what better place to seek employment, than in the care of the most helpless?

I'd like to see more stringent qualifications for people who work with the vulnerable.
Psychological testing should certainly be a part of their tentative employment.

And if anyone suggests that many hospice care workers are medical professionals....remember that more than a few errant nurses have been tagged with the moniker -- "angel of death!"

My harsh approach is not meant to slander any particular form of health care provider.
The truly compassionate caregivers are real "angels." Their work is hard, and often unrewarding. And it takes a great deal of strength to work with the ill, the elderly and the disabled, daily....while trying, all the while, to keep your heart from breaking.

But rather, my goal is to anger the rest of us! Yes, to anger us into action, and to force the changes that must be made!

Remembering our loved ones is a good start. Remember, too, that we may someday find ourselves in the same dire situation.
Fight for the rights of terminal patients and their families, that they're allowed to make their own informed decisions, without being pressured.
What better way to honor the memory of those we've lost?

I'm loving this thread. It has been a year since my MIL passed. I still think her death was rushed. Any time I mentioned it (to family or whoever) I was told I'm not a doctor, I was in denial about her condition, etc. NO. Her story is just like so many here. Maximum amount of haldol plus morphine, she stopped eating and drinking (too drugged to do so) and died.
Let it be on the conscience of those that take it upon themselves to decide that someone should die. As far as I'm concerned if the patient is asking for help that's different. It's a compassionate act. But how many are blindsided by overdoses? They never saw it coming, or worse knew it was happening and couldn't do anything about it.

My mom passed away just this past Saturday in hospice. She had a stroke Wednesday night, we admitted her in-patient Thursday night. Friday morning when relatives started arriving, she was already non-responsive. The nurse asked us if an iv was ok because she wasn't swallowing any longer, and they wanted to be able to give her pain meds. She was just laying there unconscious.

We asked if they could tell us how long she had, since she was no longer eating or drinking. They said maybe 3 or 4 days. They told my sister Friday night that she was NOT on the 48 hour "watch": she had no skin mottling on her feet, no rattle in her lungs, etc.
Saturday, the remaining family members arrived in early afternoon. Earlier that morning, my sister, who had stayed the night, told me they put a subcutaneous injection port in her arm, so the meds would "last longer". At 3:30 Saturday afternoon, the nurse came in with 2 full sized syringes, not the skinny ones I had used to give her pain and anxiety meds at home. One was half full, the other full. She screwed the full one into the port and injected half, then all of the half full one, then the rest of the first. My mom had never moved, never opened her eyes, never responded at all. There was no reason to give her anything.

I went home to nap, since I was so exhausted. At 6 pm, my daughter called from the hospital. They had told her that mom would probably be gone in 24 hours. I got there about 6:30. My father, sister, and daughter were all around her, each with a hand on her. Mom was laying on her back, a gasping breath coming every minute or so. I laid my head next to hers, listening as her breathing slowed. About ten minutes after I got there, she took her last breath. I have never been so utterly devastated in my life. What a horrible thing to experience. I can't get the image or sound out of my head, nor the look on that nurses face as she euthanized my mother.
I am shaking so bad right now, I can hardly type. I fell apart that night. Totally apart. It wasn't until the next morning that I put it all together. They HAD to use the subcutaneous, because that much morphine in an iv would have killed her in seconds. They had to make it look natural. And how did we go from 3 days on Friday, to 24 hours on Saturday, to dead in 4 hours??
Of course, when I told my sister this, she said she didn't blame them for her dying so quickly. That she was glad it was over quick and that mom didn't have to suffer. I say she should have been allowed to die naturally, with the minimal pain medication. She was murdered, plain and simple.
I won't be able to pursue it legally, but they WILL know that I know what they did. I will never get over this. I will never forget, and never forgive.

Oh, horselady, sorry for your loss. BUT, ASK what was in the syringes, don't just assume what you are assuming. I'd bet dollars to donuts one was a saline flush - the one that they gave part of, then the rest of it after the medication one. You should be able to find out what the medication one actually was. If she was comatose from a stroke, it was a very, very bad one to start wtih, and she could almost certainly not have recovered. What you saw at the very end was periodic or Cheyne-Stokes breathing due to neurologic compromise - you would more likely have just seen slower and shallower respiration until it stopped if she was overdosed. I hope you find out she was not mistreated.

josiewails, where on earth did you get the idea that hospice gets government funding for 6 months per patient, regardless of how long the patient lives? Your whole rant is based on that falsehood.

My husband lived 5 weeks after being admitted to hospice. My mother was discharged when she improved greatly after 3 months. Hospice has to bill medicare for their services. They do not get a flat fee per patient.

I am so very sorry that you view your mother's death as murder. That has to be unbearably traumatic for you.

Please do not spread false information about how Hospice providers are funded for their work.

jeannegibbs -- first, I offer my sincere condolences regarding the loss of your dear husband...and hope that your mother's health has continued to improve.

Also, I appreciate your sympathy regarding my own loss.

Secondly, I realize that some of my comments could use some clarification, and I'll now attempt that....with references:

Medicare pays for the vast majority of hospice care in the United States. (i)

Hospice care is intended for people with 6 months or less to live if the disease runs its normal course. If you live longer than 6 months, you can still get hospice care,
as long as the hospice medical director or other hospice doctor recertifies that you’re terminally ill. (ii)

In fact, that 6 month period is actually a Medicare rule --

"Your hospice doctor and your regular doctor (if you have one) certify that you’re terminally ill (with a life expectancy
of 6 months or less)." (iii)

Given just the information above, one might conclude that hospices would be quite diligent, when choosing which patients to accept.

Yet, in recent decades, what began as a movement to improve the end-of-life experience has become more of a commercial enterprise. (iv)
In fact, a 2011 Bloomberg News report noted that the growth in hospice care has been fueled by enrollment bonuses to employees and kickbacks to nursing homes
that refer patients. Investigators alleged that this led hospices to accept patients who weren’t actually eligible for the service. (v)

Personally, offering financial incentives for drumming-up more business, is a practice I find quite chilling!
But, jeanne, here's what I believe is the real problem --

Medicare has capped the average amount of money a hospice can make on a patient -- currently around $25,000 -- which amounts to about 180 days of routine care.
This is NOT a per-patient limit, but is AVERAGED OVER ALL OF THE HOSPICE'S PATIENTS. (vi)

Now, can you see why the hospice company might want the highest volume of patients, with the shortest amount of time remaining?
If you've ever worked in wholesale/retail, jeanne -- especially, dealing in a perishable product -- you'll probably recognize the term, "stock rotation."

(i) washingtonpost/business/economy/2014/12/26/a7d90438-692f-11e4-b053-65cea7903f2e_story.html

(ii) hospicenet/html/medicare.html

(iii) https://www.medicare.gov/pubs/pdf/02154.pdf

(iv) http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/leaving-hospice-care-alive-rising-rates-of-live-discharge-in-the-us-raise-questions-about-quality-of-care/2014/08/06/13a4e7a0-175e-11e4-9e3b-7f2f110c6265_story.html

(v) bloomberg/news/2011-12-06/hospice-care-revealed-as-14-billion-u-s-market.html

(vi) washingtonpost/business/economy/medicare-rules-create-a-booming-business-in-hospice-care-for-people-who-arent-dying/2013/12/26/4ff75bbe-68c9-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html

GardenArtist -- thank you for asking! I've just seen your post, and apologize for not answering sooner.
Currently, the hospice patient I care for is an older brother. But throughout the years, I've lost my mother, a younger brother, my sister-in-law, and two very close friends -- all under hospice care.

Very interesting?

OP, and others who have suffered and are still suffering, I am so so sorry. Morphine is a respiratory depressant. It will hasten death. They should tell you that.

Hi Christine73: Are you in the Medical Field? I wish some one will give me a definite answer, how morphine work in your body, if a patient like my father has aspiration phemonious and my friend has COPD. Does morphine really helping them or hasten their death or just give them a mercy kill. What is respiratory depressant? Is this mean the lung slow down in taking the O2 to the body then all the organs will slowly die own their own because they are lack of O2? If you have a lot of knowledge about how morphine is really function inside our body, your sharing of the knowledge is greatly appreciated.

vstefans, it was saline, I now know, but they still gave her 10 times what I had been giving her at home, when she showed NO SIGNS of anxiety. She was completely comatose! And her last minutes of breathing were EXACTLY that...slower, then slower as each minute passed, until the final breath. It took all of 10 minutes. We went from Friday (3-4 days left) to Saturday (told not on the 48 hour watch yet), to Saturday evening (24 hours), to death, 4 hours later. You tell me.

Pshu333, I am not in the medical field. My info on this comes from experience of being around sick and dying people. I don't have all the details of exactly how morphine works in the body, but I do know that death is a possible side effect, and more likely when dosages of morphine are increased quickly instead of slowly. Respiratory depression is also listed as a side effect. It sounds like you really need an exact answer. I would get the medical records from the hospice and go over them with a doctor you trust. I'm so sorry you're suffering like this and you were made to feel powerless. You do have a legal right to this information.

countrymouse from pbfordad july 8, 2015. Thanks for your interest!

Thank you Christine73, I do suffer a lot, my Dad meant a lot to me, I do not expect him to end his life by mercy kill. He loves his life too, I was misleading by my own family and the medical staff. I will dig into the truth of the morphine dosage and how it works when they get inside the body. But I have to accept the fact I can not bring my Dad back, but I want the hospital and the hospice to stop doing this to another human being, they don't understand how much they are hurting people that to lost their love ones.

Morphine relieves pulmonary congestion and folks with CHF will breathe easier and be more comfortable with a reasonable dose. And it relieves pain, even the pain of a heart attack. Too much does depress respiration so the person builds up carbon dioxide and does not get enough oxygen and if that is severe enough, it can hasten or cause death. Given IV it acts fast, given SQ not quite so fast; doses are close to equivalent, and when you say 10x the dose was given that is of concern for a medication error. If that did happen, the nurse may not have even realized it, she may have been giving what was ordered and it may have been well in range that someone might have tolerated - people vary a lot on how much of any opioid will be needed for symptom relief, or cause any side effects; typically if you have been on it a while you have more tolerance. In hospice they often schedule pain meds on a round the clock regular basis to prevent pain or distress rather than waiting for it to occur, theoretically that allows lower doses and better alertness, but practically speaking, doses can accumulate as someone's metabolism slows down as it can with illness or aging.

I hope you do not have to go on with the image of a nurse just casually and deliberately giving a lethal dose to your mom...but if there was an error or a failure to respect your and your mom's wishes for how alert she may have wanted to be, you are entitled to know and file complaints at the very least.

horselady21 You should report it to department of health, medical board, Joint commissions and a coroner.There are people on here that may be able to help you with a lawyer. This needs to be investigated. Each and everyone of these kind of deaths and/or euthanasia should be investigated. I just mentioned a few places that you can report this to there are more. Report it to everyone you can and write comments about it on all the blogs you can.The word needs to get out so we all can help prevent this from happening. Maybe laws can be passed. I know in England people complained there was something called liverpool pathway that people were calling death pathway. Enough people complained and I don't know if it has completely changed for the better but at least it was made aware of and people were educated by other people as to what was going on. The more people know the better it is for our society. No more shoving it under the table. This is the first step to always report this and do not let anyone push this under the table.Everyone should write to Jerry Brown an email stating what happened to your loved one and say that assisted euthanasia can lead to some deadly problems. It will make hospitals and nursing homes and hospices more dangerous in california. I have read about a woman who was denied her medicine to live and was given the only choice which was the cheapest choice her insurance would offer, assisted suicide. That will make things deadly for elders disabled and many others. I also read that if someone is suspected of euthanasia they will get away with it like what happens in Oregon.People do not have to use doctors to help kill them that is not what they are for. This is not suddenly a big problem cause I suspect people have always had this choice to take their life with pills.The pills that are given are not that much different from an overdose of haldol or adivan or morphine. This will only encourage more euthanasia in the medical field.

For the people on here that lost their family members suspiciously, should report it to the coroner, the medical board, the nursing board if need be, the joint commissions, just make your complaint to as many places as possible. Get the word out by commenting blogging however you can so it will not be allowed to be shoved under the table anymore. We need to educate everyone to try and stop this from happening, There are lawyers who can also help and hopefully get these medical staff who cause so much pain to the family by killing loved ones put away behind bard.

Haldol and ativan and any overdose can cause a person to get a stroke or heart attack, heart failure or just organ failure.

Since Flowgo's brought it up, here is an article published in last week's British Medical Journal about the Liverpool Care Pathway, headlined "What next for care of the dying?" It is by Katherine Sleeman, who is a clinical lecturer in palliative medicine at King's College, London.

'Last month the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published new draft guidance on care for dying adults. The guidance serves partly to fill the gap left by the Liverpool care pathway (LCP), which was phased out in a storm of controversy after the 2013 Neuberger review.

' The well intentioned aim of the LCP was to identify the essential elements of good care from hospices [note: in the UK hospices are specialist care centres designed as an option for terminal patients; they're not the same as the US concept] and transform them into a series of prompts to guide professionals in hospital and community settings. Given that the new draft guidance is almost 300 pages long, one can understand why the Liverpool team thought that condensing this information into a few pages would be helpful. However, the LCP ultimately failed, not because the essential elements were wrong, but because of the way it was used. [personal note: I would add, because of the way it was understood and communicated, i.e. extremely badly] How can we avoid repeating this mistake?

'I recently wrote a paper, published in BMJ Open, which aims to help us understand what went wrong with the implementation of the LCP. We used qualitative data collected from 25 health professionals, who were interviewed about their experiences using integrated care pathways for the dying (including the LCP and its derivatives). Most of the interviewees described benefits of using these pathways, but they related almost exclusively to processes of care and were experienced by the healthcare professionals themselves. Although intended as guides, pathways were often interpreted as protocols. Surprisingly, interviewees did not speak of integrated care pathways as directly benefiting patients or their families by helping to ensure better outcomes in death of bereavement. When patient outcomes were mentioned, it was in the context of harm.

With hindsight it seems extraordinary, if these views were representative of mor widely held opinions, that the lCP became so rapidly and universally accepted. Our data provide insights into how this may have happened. Integrated care pathways for end of life care seemed to have symbolic value for healthcare professionals. They legitimised death as an outcome, provided a positive focus to care, and were used as a signal to herald the change from active to palliative treatment. Patchy education in palliative care may have created a vacuum that allowed a tool for which there was no strong evidence to become accepted and valued.

'Our study provides important messages for the successful development and implementation of future tools to guide care of the dying. Firstly, comprehensive education and training in palliative care is critical. A Royal College of Physicians audit recently found that mandatory training in care of the dying was only required for doctors in 19% of trusts. [note: a "trust" in this context is an operational organisation within the National Health Service]. Without such training, staff are unlikely to be able to use any pathway well or to recognise when it is being used poorly. Secondly, our study highlights the importance of grounding any future tool around patient and carer reported outcomes. Lastly, the study demonstrates the importance of collecting qualitative data in developing future tools that aim to improve care of the dying.'

Flowgo's concern being that her not-terminal mother was intentionally killed by healthcare professionals for their own reasons, it falls outside the scope of the debate on what constitutes good end-of-life care. [You believe that your mother was fit and well yet for some reason killed by her hospital team, yes, is that a fair summary, Flowgo?]

The purpose of the original Liverpool care pathway - so called because it was, literally, written down by a hospital-based team in Liverpool, England - was to help other hospital and general practice medical and nursing teams recognise when patients were going to die and give them a way to make the dying process as gentle and peaceful as possible. That was the idea. The complete pig's breakfast that was made of it by hospitals up and down the land caused a furore, to the extent that it came to represent in the minds of their families atrociously callous neglect of dying patients. On a personal note, both my cousin and a close friend sincerely believe that the LCP was responsible for their respective fathers dying painful and lingering deaths. In my uncle's case, I know that this is not true: his death was an ordeal because he continued, may God bless him, to fight it to the end. In my friend's case, I suspect it is true that the LCP guidelines were misapplied and that comfort measures that ought to have been taken were withheld.

But here is the real crux of the matter: look at that one number given in the article - only 19%, less than one fifth, of health service providers routinely train their medical staff in care of the dying. I don't know if that is also true in US, but I would expect it to be broadly parallel. I would like to know what the figures are for medical teams specialising in care of the elderly; because if training in end-of-life care is not undertaken by approaching 100% of them there is an obvious, yawning gap in their expertise.

To me, here is what we need to focus on. We are caring for people who, by virtue of being old, can be expected to approach death sooner or later. We all die. We know that one day we will have to deal with it. When that day comes, there are some parts of the process that we might expect to be able to control, such as where we would like the dying person to be and what medical interventions the person would want his or her staff to attempt. But there are untold numbers of factors that we can't predict or control, such as how fast the process will happen, what symptoms the dying person will experience or how distressing he or she will find them.

Another important point is that when we witness our loved one dying it is a uniquely horrible experience for us, the families; but it is routine to the health professionals. There they are, calmly injecting our mothers with anxiolytics, and to us it looks like they're wrapping her up and posting her off to the hereafter with not a care in the world. They're not. They're doing their job. Every day they take responsibility for minimising the suffering of dying patients. They care by making it as peaceful as they can.

But finding the fine dividing line between controlling a dying patient's symptoms and hastening death is not simple. It requires agile clinical decision-making every single time. Fail to control the symptoms adequately, and families will witness a horribly distressing death. Overcompensate, and families will fear that their loved ones were in fact killed by the treatment, and lose sight of the knowledge that the person was going to die even without it. These are the issues that medical teams need to understand. Unfortunately, too often, they get tired of explaining what they are doing to relatives and carers, or they lack the communication skills to do it well.

Caregivers and family members need, for their own peace of mind, to meet the health professionals halfway. To do that, they need to prepare themselves for the dying process so that they have informed expectations of what is likely to happen. I'm being wise after the event, here; it's more by luck than judgment that my mother's passing went as gently as it did. We had mucolytics, anxiolytics and injectable sedatives ready to hand but as it turned out she needed none of them. Lucky for me. I would have been extremely reluctant to permit their being given, and I would have had to trust her doctor and nurses. What questions would I be ruminating on now, I wonder?

The elders who were not sick were put on death pathway simply because of their age only.Most were dying and some sick but not dying and were rushed to their death. America also has been known to do this with hospices. There was no special name for what the medical staff did to my mom and she was mostly killed by hospital staff just finished off by hospice during the last hour of her life.

I , and I think, everyone here, understood that our loved ones were going to die soon. I accepted that. I knew what to look for. But when a person is already comatose, with a slack jaw, drooping ears and nose, no urine output, but no skim mottling at all on her feet, why would anyone in their right mind give a massive injection of ativan (or anything, for that matter)?? She could have been allowed to die naturally. Was it convenient that the last dose was given after the last family members left to go back home? Did they overhear my sister saying she hoped mom went quickly? Despite what people want (or think they want), it isn't up to the medical personnel to decide when death comes. It wasn't up to my sister and her work schedule and what was convenient. It killed me, not only watching her moment of death, but the talk of her going to heaven, being with angels, and all the other platitudes that mean nothing. My father is practically overjoyed at his new found freedom. Everyone is planning her memorial, buying fancy jewelry in which to store her ashes....it makes me sick. I refuse to be apart of it, knowing what I saw done in those final hours. I cared for that woman like she was my own child, and her last days were ripped away from me by people who had no qualms about taking what little life she had left and squashing it.
I have already written to the hospital director. The hospice people have been trying to call for days, hand I just let it go to voicemail. I doubt anything will ever come of it, but I will tell everyone what happened, and write to every person I can, in hopes that others wont have this happen to them. I will never be the same.

If you have ever witnessed death without the morphine, you might change your mind. The head arches back, there is gasping and moaning and limbs twitching up and down. It's the most hideous grand mal seizure you ever saw. Give me the drugs. Please.

Pam's right. What joy is there seeing a loved one in absolute agony? Morphine actually makes breathing easier which results in a much less painful death.

Horselady, why do you not want to take the hospice people's calls? They might have something to tell you that you would want to know, mightn't they?

Horselady, I'm extending my sympathy on the loss of your mother, I wanted to say something sooner but was at a loss as to what to say.
I'm sorry so many are in anguish over their loved ones death. I have not faced this yet with my mother and I chose to not be present when others in my family passed on.

It seems a lot of the problem lies in lack of communication between medical staff and family, and also our own preconceived notions of what dying is actually like.
I know that medical personnel are busy, and even tasks at end of life become somewhat routine, but if it was habitual procedure to explain every move they make in the final days and hours I think there would be less blame sent in their direction and fewer families would feel torn apart.
And many of us have Hollywood notions of the end of life from all those deathbed scenes on screen, even those who have perhaps sat with one or two other loved ones can not be prepared for the varying realities of the dying process.
I have tried to read everything I can find surrounding this in order to prepare myself, I would like to encourage others looking ahead to watch a you tube video recommended by others on this site;
Gone from my sight, by Barbara Karnes

I didnt say I didnt want her to have nothing. If you would read my posts, I was giving her both drugs at home. I agreed to continue those drugs in patient. But not THAT much!

And I could just hear their explanation about what they are doing, if they took the time! There just IS NO REASON TO GIVE THAT MUCH OF A DRUG TO AN ALREADY COMATOSE PATIENT!
I'm done now. I won't be back. I need to try to move on. Thanks for all the discussion.