Did Hospice rush your loved ones death?

Rosie123 I was the only caregiver to Mom. I had no complaints regarding Hospice help which was limited. I am grateful.

Rojan99 my mother had no problem getting IV antibiotic etc. infusions for her UTIS which was often I had no problem requesting she had a private Insurance and Medicare, I was very active in Mom care. Whether they said no I was insistent.nShe is MY Mother and Had the final say, they were not (Hospice)around all day and night,

If you want to learn more about how the culture of death has taken over our healthcare system, please visit the Facebook page, "Exposing the Invisible Culture of Death in American Healthcare"

Well, if I were dying of pancreatic cancer, I would sure welcome morphine!  I suspect that in many cases, family members do not see or feel things from the patient's view.   If you take painkillers they will likely make you "drugged" - so?? Better to be in agony?  Fact is, we are all going to die.  Family says "well, she was this bad lost year but she recovered." That does not mean she will this year.

it was horrible. the first day , like you said, he could still talk, he said" this place is a torture chamber". And I did not get him out. .....I am sorry, Paul.

Read the side affects of Ativan

me too

The hospital told Hospice that my 73 year old brother had Lung Cancer so my brother had a stroke back July 12 2012 was paralyzed on the right side he had one of those motorized wheel chairs he went to get in the wheel chair from his bed like he always did but it pulled him out of bed and he landed on the floor he was really in pain it looked like his leg was broken I am disabled so I couldn't get him in his pajamas everytime I tried he said it hurt so I called Hospice two nurses came a guy and a woman I tried to tell them that his leg was broken and they just talked to each other and said he had a broken hip and if he went to the hospital that they would want to do surgery and my brother would die, they told me they could take him and help him with pain that they had better food then hospital and I could even go too my brother kept asking me if he should go I said well it sounds better then what I can do so the guy nurse said he would be back at 1:30 am to pick him up so they picked my brother up and got there at 2:30 am May 13, 2018 so I called at 3:00 am they said he was resting and when ever I called they said he was resting, on May 14, 2018 a priest called and asked if he could go see my brother I said well ask him he said well he is sleeping okay if I can't wake him I will call you back he called me back and said the nurse told him that my brother wasn't waking up in the near future and I didn't know what he mean't by that my sister told the nurse to keep the priest away, so then on May 15, 2018 the nurse called me and said that my brother was like in a coma me and my sister said we were on our way we were an hour away we were almost there and they called and told me my brother died yeah all they did was give him morphine they said they didn't feed him or give him water when they gave him the morphine he never woke up, then I found out he had a broken leg not hip and that he didn't have Lung Cancer or any Cancer and they acted like he was going to die any day telling him that so if I would have taken him to the emergency room instead my brother would still be alive.

I'm sure that hospice has its place in certain circumstances, and they do a good job of easing the pain and comforting the dying. But it shouldn't be an absolute death sentence and routine medical care should be provided.

The overwhelming majority of people going onto hospice are elderly and on medicare. Their rule is that you can't use medicare benefits (see a doctor) when you're on hospice, so you're effectively sealed off from any treatment what so ever, even for a simple and routine UTI.

I can understand that terminal illnesses will no longer be treated, but hospice providers neglect to treat anything except for discomfort and they ignore everything else. The only solution they have to anything is to throw morphine and ativan on it. I'd be interested to find out how many hospice patients actually died from their terminal illness as opposed to a routine medical condition that was neglected.

By design, since you're no longer allowed to seek a doctors care for any reason what so ever, death is certain and hospice becomes a way to quickly dispose of the elderly in order to save medicare money. In it's present implementation, it is non-voluntary euthanasia by neglect.

they gave him methadone without any counseltation, even though i asked for a conference with the doctor, I could not get one. It was worse than horrible to see him die like that

I think they drugged him to death, they did not make him comfortable they made him pass out, then said he had anxiety. They just did not want him to move

@Shane1124 The reason I feel as I do is my Mom was full of fight & life, she was griping at the nurses who would only give her a wet sponge stick when she was extremely thirsty, able to argue with me when I tried to explain as soon as the Dr. came in to see her we'd see about getting her a glass of water, just be patient! She was able to fight wanting to go into Hospice because she was told she could have whatever she wanted to eat & drink & they'd disconnect the tubes, IV's & picc line from her giving her more freedom to move around. She was able to argue with her sister when I told her she needed to call her thinking her sister could maybe talk her out of her decision. She was able to tell me, yes we could talk about her decision once she got settled & if we could make sure this is really what she wanted. BUT, when they moved her & Hospice nurses asked me to leave the room while they got her settled, I never dreamed it was the last words I hear of hers, never dreamed we wouldn't have another conversation, never dreamed that all the people we should have called, we'd never get the chance. She was knocked out when I got back to her room about 15-20 mins later and she never woke up again. I feel so horribly guilty for not weighing options out a little more before her going to Hospice and yet I know it was her choice, and she did tell me I did nothing wrong and said I was the best daughter one could have so that of course eases my guilty feelings but, still I struggle with it & she passed away 4 years this coming November. I don't think about it as often as I used to but, the guilt is still heavy when I do think about it! Had I known what to expect, even if we went through with her decision I would have had a goodbye conversation with her & I would have made sure she spoke with loved ones who we should have called and didn't! That's where the guilt is centered I think, I wasn't at ease with her decision & should have been & I wish the lady from Hospice had been more honest about what to expect. Instead she fed to what my mom wanted, she wanted a drink of water & she wanted to move about freely without the tubes, etc & she promised all that and promised that once we got moved if we changed our minds she could be moved back into care on the floor she was on. She should have said you need to say your goodbyes, here's what we will give her, here's what to expect & we'll give you a moment to discuss this & get all the goodbyes said before we move her!

The real question should be, "Is there anyone's death Hospice has not rushed or actually CAUSED!!!! Cold, calculated pre-meditated or pre-medicated murder is what Hospice is all about! I have called them the "Euthanasia Crew" ever since they murdered my father with their drugs.

What amazing service they offer! No need for an Auschwitz or Dachau as Hospice will conveniently come to your home & murder you in your own bed! Or like they did when they murdered my uncle as he left the hospital to return home. They repeatedly shot him up with toxic levels of morphine (against the family's orders) so that by the time he arrived home he no longer needed care. He only needed a mortician!

Why would I call either of these deaths murder?

Because I have worked as an expert in wrongful death cases involving prescription drugs for close to three decades now & we have gathered all the evidence on both cases to prove, without a shadow of doubt, that both of these deaths were very clearly MURDER!

As these cases continue to be proven in court let's hope these nurses & doctors committing these crimes will begin to see they are actually guilty of murder & can be prosecuted as such. Maybe then, as they face the reality of their guilt, they will grow a conscience & this nightmare will finally come to an end!

Everyone needs to go to the website for Hospice Patient Alliance at www.hospicepatients.org just as I did when I went into shock at my father's extremely rapid decline & sudden death & found everything I already knew must have been the case in my father's death spelled out, demonstrating the exact method of the murder in detail! My father was dead in only days after Hospice arrived to "Help"! 

Learn the truth about what is really happening to your loved ones before it is too late for you & your loved one too!

The very same thing happened to my bosses mother. He sold her house put her in a nursing home. Paid the nursing home over 100,000.00 and after the money ran out put her in hospice. Because all her money was gone the state had to pay for her stay. Once in hospice she worsend in a week. My stomach was sick because I saw her deteriorate very quickly and passed...yes I think there death is indused.

Sorry that some folks had a bad experience. Our hospice experience was very good. Unfortunately, hospice was called late... very late. That would seem to be the case for many. I'd mentioned it to relatives multiple times in the six months before they finally called. They seemed to think hospice meant they were "giving up." Finally she was so ill they could no longer ignore reality. She could barely eat, had lost over 100 lb. and her only activity was going to the bathroom. She was unable to bathe, care for herself, could barely eat a few bites without assistance ... well, really was entirely bedbound. After a fall at home, where she hit her head, the decision was made to call hospice. What a blessing! They immediately brought a hospital bed, bedside commode ... everything we needed. Most importantly they brought liquid pain medication and anti-anxiety medication. She'd begun having very restless nights and lots of anxiety. The Ativan was quite helpful in this regard. Even after hospice was started, she had a good full two weeks of coherent interaction, able to eat little bits, joking, laughing, aware of friends and family. Then, over the next few days she gradually quit eating. She then quit drinking anything but sips to take medication. A few days later, she refused all fluids. We had to crush meds or use liquid meds. Her deterioration was rapid from here. After all fluids stopped, she slipped into a comatose state within a few days. She could rarely be roused unless she was in pain. Without the Ativan and morphine, it would have been unbearable (for her, for us ... her family & caregivers).

Four days after she began refusing fluids, she died. She was not thrashing in pain or crying out with anxiety. She was alseep, surrounded by her loved ones. It was a beautiful time ... I'm grateful she was comfortable and died peacefully in her sleep.

Grief can skew your thoughts. Often hospice is called much too late, when the loved one only has weeks, maybe even days to live. It would seem easy/logical then to assume and blame hospice. I found hospice to be only helpful. They answered calls quickly ... even nights, weekends and holidays. I say God Bless them and the work they do.

Parentless, please contact me.
We had the same incidents.
With both of our parents.
I’m so sorry for what your parents had to endure as well. With sincere sympathy,

Lisa

Freqflyer, i disagree as a nurse with your saying they will pass on same time frame with less pain. In nursing we call this “snowing” someone. Narcotics depress the respiratory system. Such as with my mother Weds., she was sleeping due to the prior doses of morphine/Ativan mixture. Her respiration’s were steady, they were not struggled but they were more rapid then normal. Her oxygen level stat was low at 82, but It is in titration range, an hour before, she was not dying that’s for sure. She was not struggling in anyway, she was, as i said, asleep. They came in and gave that dose of morphine/Ativan and minutes later the aide took her pulse ox, and her O2 stat was at 61, and I was like WTH? Number one, if the dose itself did not cause that drop out, that still means a dose was given when she was in the low 60’s (but not struggling so no reason to give), and medically you would not give that to someone with an O2 stat that low knowing it would kill them most likely. Fifteen minutes later my mother was gone. They are snowing patients and that is sad. My mom never got to exchange love you’d and goodbyes with her children and grandchildren. I feel robbed of getting to let her know i was right there with her and loved her so much. I am now, that I actually have proof they are snowing at this hospital, writing a dnr that states I am not to be snowed, i am to be awake even if I’m pain because i want to know my family is with me and be able to tell them I love them. This is bs what they are doing. We were not with Hospice, both times this has been under regular hospital staff care.

I just lost my second parent to this same thing. My father passed in 2004. He caught a superbug infection carried into him by nurses from another patient and was a vent. They pulled vent due to DNR. Dad seemed to be holding his own well enough. A male oncoming night nurse rushed into his room with a syringe saying, “enough is enough”, injected my dads iv line and dads vitals plummeted instantly and he died. I was stunned. My brother told me to let it go, dad would have suffered so it was best. Last Weds my mom was in for early diagnosed sepsis from UTI, she pulled out of a serious deadly case of sepsis months before, and they said she was expected to this time. My POA brother decided she did not need anymore treatment, and next thing i know she was out like a light. The doctor had just been in and said that we would probably be having to decide where to move her in 3 Days, and every one left but me and the nurse came in and gave her a shot of morphine and Ativan and 15 mins later my mom died. I actually came searching to see if this is really happening in our hospitals. ;(

My mother died of sepsis, secondary to acute urinary tract infection because a home hospice provider refused to have a urinalysis done and treat her, even after several appeals to them that we thought she had a UTI. They assured us that her symptoms were not UTI related. We would have never known had we not pulled the plug on hospice and sent her to the hospital, but it was unfortunately too late.    

Fighter, I am seeing red on your behalf.

Please call your hospice provider and tell them exactly what you have told us. If you can't speak coherently when doing that, do you have a family member, friend or neighbour who could help you? Have you discussed this issue with the day shift?

Night rotas are hard on people physically (especially if they're 'moonlighting' of course, but that's another question); and there is a sense for them of having to grit your teeth and get the job done competently on your own; and so we make allowances. But all the same. There should not be any real difference in behaviour towards patients or their loved ones, and what you describe is *abysmal.*

Thank you Countrymouse and Pepsee for your kind words and support. I have decided to call the night nurses the "kill crew". But I want to be fair. The day nurse today was great. She gave Mom a shower, drained her stomach, adjusted her in her bed, etc. (Was that because I had a crying fit and have spoken to two social workers already about the pressure of the DNR? the Catheter?) But the night nurses are really something else. Who are they accountable to? Who watches them? Seriously? What are the checks and balances here? No one comes around here at night to see what is happening. My understanding is that they are supposed to check the patients every hour. They have not checked on their own accord. They drug them then leave. The dying are still living.. I have to film it. Seriously. I may film what happens when they come into the room tomorrow night. Nightline or some program like that has to read all these 5 years of posts. Mom woke up moaning at 2am and wanted to be turned because she had pain in her side. I buzzed the nurse. The nurse's aide (assistant) came in and I asked if she could help me turn my Mom on her side. Mom had already grabbed the railing and turned herself partially on her side. The nurse's aide asked her if she was in pain and my Mom said yes, her side. Sure enough, the morphine pump was pushed and she walked out and told the RN that my Mom was asking for pain medication. Wait? Isn't morphine pain medication? Next thing I know the RN walks in with Ativan and Zofran and I asked her what is was she was giving her. I didn't argue because they don't speak to me, greet me or acknowledge me being in the room. So she administered it to my Mom, left her twisted in the bed even though I asked the RN again to help move her onto her side. But no - she ignored me. Mom went to sleep.. I couldn't communicate with her anymore to find out what was bothering her. During the day, she begs me for water. "Please, I want water" she says. "I want a big glass of water. Please". We are now going on day 13 with no food. Mom is a fighter. She refuses the catheter because it equals death to her and she is not ready to give it up. She will fight it and this place till the end. If she can get up, even if she is in terrible pain, she will. How did we get to Hospice you ask? I live in another country on assignment, and when my Mom was violently throwing up in the hospital, after two years of non-stop chemo, they told her, this is it - your next stop is Hospice. I was not there. So Mom signed herself in. She is 81 years old, lived by herself, had chemo for two and a half years non-stop and refused to give up; and didn't want to go to Hospice. I think she is here because she ultimately didn't want to burden us? I don't know. I don't know what happened the moment it was signed. I do know that she asked me last month not to send her to Hospice too early when the time was near. "They will put you in your grave" she indicated at the time. I thought at that time - "there you go again Mom - always an opinion about something. Always fighting a cause. Aren't those Hospice people really good people?" With age and experience does come wisdom. That will haunt me.. The kill crew is on tomorrow night again.. My mother would not want me to be hurtful or hateful to anyone, and I do not want to be despite me calling the night crew a rude name. But for sure, someone has to be accountable for these desperate people who are still living in each one of these rooms, who deserve dignity, their wishes to be heard and understood individually, differently, and who should be attended to as patients with specific needs and desires. Thank goodness there are places like this for certain circumstances, but on the other hand, these places must be held accountable.

I know these hospice people are murderers. My dad was put in a foster home one night and given morphine at bedtime and wham bam my mom a widow the next morning.

My ex husbands father passed this morning under the same circumstances. These men didn’t have a lot of time left, but were rushed into the hereafter Faster than hell by these EVIL hospice members. Damn it.

This HAS to be stopped...

Get rid of HOSPICE now!!!

Aw Fighter, I'm so sorry you and Mom are going through this heartbreaking time.

I can't help but ask who signed Mom into hospice's care?

I'm sure you know much more about it than I do, but then you must be aware of how notoriously aggressive ovarian cancer is? The rate of deterioration must be horrible for you, no time to adjust.

Please keep posting. I also wondered if you could ask for help from the hospital or hospice chaplain? Chaplains do moral support as well as actual prayer, if you're not in the mood to pray.

The hospital would like a nice tidy DNR on their files. Of course they would. They don't need to harass your mother about it, though - if she's not up to it and it becomes a real question, they can exercise some clinical judgement instead.

The catheter. Give that night nurse a slap from me; but actually the valid point is that being moved and turned to be changed is also hard on your mother. A catheter (counterintuitively) would save her having to go through that routine, which is probably very uncomfortable for her now.

Hugs, Fighter. Just posting quickly so you know someone is listening.

It is the middle of the night here and I am sitting next to my mother wondering if Hospice is giving her too much medication. I visited my Mom two weeks ago and when I returned, the doctors and hospital had given up on her and sent her to Hospice. She has Ovarian Cancer and has a blockage in her intestines. They say the cancer is all over her stomach cavity and they cannot put a tube in her stomach. She and I were eating sandwiches and pasta together two weeks ago and now she is here. She said to me when I arrived, that she feels like she is going backwards very quickly in this place. She knew/knows the cancer is terminal and that this end is near but to be at the hospital one day getting treatment to prolong your life, and then the next day in Hospice being administered morphine and Ativan around the clock is shocking. She is a fighter and she knew what would happen when she got here. She asked me two weeks ago that when the time came, not to bring her to Hospice too quickly. She knew it already then..They have been pushing a catheter and she has refused. She is so frail and thin but insists on getting up to go to the bathroom. She got up one night on her own and tried to walk to the door and fell backwards and hit her head. I think they are reducing her fluids now just so she won't go pee and so that this process accelerates. The night nurse gave me a hard time at 5am in the morning and said that by not having a catheter in her, this was hard on her nurses. Really? I helped her all by myself out of her bed because no one would respond the the alarm to come and help her sit on the pot. She has ripped out the tubes out of her nose that went into her stomach. Would Hospice have done that? No. Nothing has happened since she has ripped this tubes out. My Mom refuses to sign the DNR too. She is headstrong and she seems to be the only one fighting for her "right time" to die. Even I am confused. Hospice, the nurses and doctors keep saying that she is dying and she needs to sign the DNR, she needs to take the meds and they keep giving her less IV. Isn't Hospice about how she wants to die? I don't get it? Isn't this about her wishes? Even if it is the hard way? How did that get lost along the way? If she wants to fight it till the end, then let her fight it. Why are we slowly pushing her another direction? Or, am I confused? The longer I sit here day and night, I believe that medicine is indeed an art as much as it is a science. It seems every nurse has a different spin and different experience which influences what happens. They can tell me whatever about the amounts of morphine or ativan or fluids and I really don't have enough experience to understand.. Even the doctors, they all say things differently. And, the nurses are supposed to stop by every hour... its been three hours and counting - not one has stopped by. Let me say one thing for sure, I am not against Hospice. They helped me with my father's death 25 years ago and I know they help thousands of people. But today, with much older and wiser eyes, and my mother who is a fighter and now lying next to me, I just think it is so important for these organizations to make sure they understand the wishes of the person they are treating. The doctor pulled me out this morning at 6am and asked my what my goals were. What a question!! Ask her!! Take her off of ativan, and give her some fluids and trust me, she will be crystal clear with you. This is not about me. She knows she is being starved to death. This is about my dearest mother..

Hi Andrew,
Since I don't want to read a whole book, how about the short version? 😊

Yes, Hospice did rush my mother's death. I wrote a book about it. http://www.WhiIHateHospice.com. Not a feel bad book. Easy to read. About family, community and my fight with Hospice over the misuse of drugs and the medical industry's ignorance of health.