Meeting about Hospice

Allen asked to address the group before handing it over to our speakers. Allen wanted to thank Tim and others for setting the wheels in action to have this meeting as he was very ignorant about hospice and if we had not forced the issue with him for his friend, he does not think things would have gone very well. He stated that his friend is in very poor health; but that his wife and children are happy that he is in hospice care now and that they are able to be with him. Then Allen made a statement Tim and I had hoped he would. Allen said that his friend had originally wanted to be in his own bed and die there. Now that he had made life very difficult for his wife and family, he regretted his statement as he was receiving better care from hospice and realizes what a burden he had put on his family.

With that said, Allen introduced the speaker from hospice. She was the one that had gone with us and assisted Allen's friend being admitted to hospice. She asked Tim and me to stand so that everyone would know who had helped make it happen. Then she thanked Jessie for opening her home to everyone to have this meeting. She thanked everyone for coming, as it was not often enough that they were able to educate a group like this. Most of the time it was even smaller groups and often it was one person at a time. She admitted that the topic was often one that many people wanted to ignore.

She then went into what hospice is and could mean for people. She thanked me for my one reference which had helped Allen and felt that understanding hospice was important for everyone. She stated that hospice is truly for those near the end of life, but that not everyone dies within six months and that occasionally people are on hospice more than once. They are carefully reviewed by a doctor before being put in hospice. That once in hospice if they live longer than six months that does not mean they are removed from hospice the first day over six months.

As she started more information on hospice, her cell phone went off. Almost at the same time, the county health nurse had her cell phone ring. Both took the calls, and said they were sorry, but that duty called. We knew this was a possibility as we had been warned that there were several patients in conditions that could call them away.

As we found out from them a few days later, both had different patients and both had taken a turn for the worse. The hospice patient had died the next day and the county nurse said her patient had been rushed to the hospital and airlifted to another hospital. She was still recovering and would be in the hospital for several more days. Tim has received two more dates for them to talk to us and we will need to decide when.