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You're in the medical profession, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't hospice care kind of evolve because the medical community simply won't accept the fact of death..
Hospice care is a type of care provided at the end of one's life in order to make them as comfortable as possible while the natural process of death proceeds. It can be provided at home, in an ALF, or in a SNF (nursing home). Hospice programs provide equipment, medications and medical care designed to keep the patient as comfortable as possible, while not hastening the patient's death.
Hospice was created to allow patients the choice to die of the disease in as dignified a manner as possible, rather than to go to the hospital to receive treatments that are not only expensive but ineffective for advanced disease processes. Since our hospital system is designed to keep people alive rather than to allow them to die, it gave the hospitals an "out" so that their death rates aren't as high. Yep - hospitals will send an actively dying patient to a hospice to decrease their death rates. If the patient dies in transport, it's not part of the hospital's statistics.
So in your case above (elderly woman in ALF), she could have received hospice care wherever she was. A lot of families have a difficult time letting go and patients go back & forth to the hospital until they die, at a cost of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (to the Medicare system, of course). Hospice is significantly less costly, both financially & emotionally.
Hospices provide all of the medications and have them delivered to the house - and supplement the care in the home. However, depending upon the patient, the family, and the hospice workers, some patients die in pain. I've met many families who refuse to allow the patient to have stronger meds because they want the patient as alert as possible.
I've seen patients in intractable pain, yet caregivers don't want them medicated. I've seen patients who were so agitated it was painful to watch, but again family members don't want to medicate them. There are also those patients with disease processes that are so incredibly painful (pancreatic cancer & bone cancer come to mind) that it's nearly impossible to make these patients "comfortable."
Many hospice patients do become (to quote you) "virtually nothing but a living shell that wants to die." They just don't do it in the hospital - and hopefully they are medicated and cared for appropriately.
This 29 year old woman who was diagnosed with a terminal disease chose to forego watching her life ebb... she didn't want to become bedbound, incontinent and confused, unable to speak. She chose not to go through the process of being able to function less day-by-day (or being okay one day, and losing function the next). Not knowing whether her family could provide the care she needed, she either chose not to have her family provide 24-hour care, changing & bathing her - or being placed in a nursing home because they couldn't care for her.
I do have intimate experience with this particularly nasty tumor: my step-mother died of a Glio and it took months. The family member in charge of decisions had her admitted to the hospital, a nursing home for rehab, home, hospital, rehab, home, hospital, then home to die. It took about 3 months after she finally was discharged home, during which time she had a private paid caregiver (hospice care supplements but doesn't provide 24-hour care) in the home.
Hospice is good - it does allow for closure. It also allows those people who want to at home to remain there. But it's not always a Hallmark moment. I've seen family fights, caregivers abandon patients, caregivers who appear to be taking the patient's drugs, patients who are mean to the caregivers... I've seen people who wanted to die at home be placed in nursing homes because they couldn't afford caregivers....
I've seen more "functional" deaths than "dysfunctional," but it ain't always a Hollywood movie where everyone comes together and sing Kumbaya.
If it were me, seeing what I've seen, I'd be on my way to Oregon.
Think anyone would have known the difference is she had just not made it a social media, and chose to handle her personal life with just her and her loved ones in the whole experience?
Public executions are never peaceful. And if they evoke feelings of anything for you other than despair, sadness or anger. Then you are already dead.
Think anyone would have known the difference is she had just not made it a social media, and chose to handle her personal life with just her and her loved ones in the whole experience?
Aaaand she is compelled to keep quiet about it why, exactly?
She had to move to fricken' Portland, Oregon to end her life legally. Nobody should have to enter Portland under any circumstances, but to do so at the end of life is truly grim.
Do you also heckle the parents of Amber, for whom the Amber Alert is named? Do you spit on the relatives of other victims of injustice, on the grounds that they should have just kept quiet about it?
Are individual examples of injustice only suitable for pushing wingnut agendas?
I don't have any agenda, I just told you my opinion, this is America and before you assholes decided to change that with your Twitter Verse and Facebook, where Ironically we're all supposed to be more open and honest, instead you guys want to shame everyone for having a different opinion than yours. Had she been talking about God and Jesus and looking forward to meet them "On the other side" you same people would have have had judges trying to stop it, because she was surely being brain washed by crack pot religious nuts.
Look I respect her situation, I respect the way she wanted to end it. I don't respect or condone the public spectacle of it. That's my opinion, and I'll stick with it. At least I'm honest about it, so go ahead super haters, call me the hater for having the balls, to say my opinion.
Ironically we're all supposed to be more open and honest, instead you guys want to shame everyone for having a different opinion than yours.
She shared her opinions. You said "Good riddance asshole" to shame her for having those opinions.
You're in a hole. Stop digging.
Had she been talking about God and Jesus and looking forward to meet them "On the other side" you same people would have have had judges trying to stop it
So you're claiming, in an act of projection, that many of us are assholes and make it our business to shame religious people who are terminally ill. And this justifies you doing the same thing?
Stop digging.
She killed her self and you cheered, stop calling me the bad guy.
Who is Rachel Maddow, Ellen DeGeneres' evil brunette lesbo media twin?
Maybe they should do an on the air bush snarfing gala during one of the times when Portia Di Rossi is in rehab.
APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says
She is a widely hated necrophilic lesbian who defiles dead women
Unlike most lesbos, she enjoys a good stiffie.
The Dead Lesbians sounds like a great name for an all chick rock band, like the Dead Kennedys.
If trolls came equipped the baby oil, the internet would be a much happier place.
Look I respect her situation, I respect the way she wanted to end it. I don't respect or condone the public spectacle of it.
I get that - and all of you keeping score, please mark your calendar as I believe this will be the one time this year that I agree with the Cap'n. A public spectacle SHOULD be unnecessary. But this woman chose to make her choice public because it's sad that she had to travel hundreds of miles in order to fulfill her wishes to die from a disease that was gonna kill her anyway. She wanted to open the issue up for conversation - and hopefully her struggles will help others with the same issues.
I would like to live in a world that doesn't require people to go far, far away in order to die from a disease that will rob them of their autonomy, health, happiness, and their ability to live relatively free of pain. I would like to live in a world that doesn't force people to make these decisions. But I don't live in such a world. I applaud the courage of this woman and her family, who opened themselves up to a horrible world of bloggers, posters and other judgmental people who believe it's their business to criticize her decisions.
Captain, what I absolutely don't respect or condone is your derogatory comments about her. If you don't like what she did, don't read about it. Click off the web page, or turn the page of the newspaper. Calling her an asshole is just plain mean, and is either indicative of your limited vocabulary or your lack of compassion. Or both.
If trolls came equipped the baby oil, the internet would be a much happier place.
Is it just me or does CIC seem obsessed with masturbation? He has made the same lame joke a dozen times already on several threads. He's either highly unoriginal or secretly turned on by the fantasy of watching me masturbate.
Translation into Cap speak:
What you jackoffs don't know about Jimmy pissagimp in the rest of the story. Back when it mattered to Idiots! I've been telling you Tards for Years about it dogs don't fuck cats when you know enough to find out the REAL story! It's been UP THE ASS for 16 years with that Fashist Rice Beater!!!!
I'm always right and I never lie!
Wow, you captured his essence there perfectly. Except I understand what you're saying a little better than I get about half of his posts.
Wow, you captured his essence there perfectly. Except I understand what you're saying a little better than I get about half of his posts.
I actually feel a little guilty about mocking Captain, because the diction, plus the occasional episodes of actually lucid writing, suggest alcohol withdrawal syndrome.
After years of hitting the sauce, your brain is basically Swiss cheese; moods and cognition are all over the place. He can wipe his face with a tissue and it comes up bloody, from the ruptured capillaries.
The occasionally improved writing occurs either during periods when the liquor store is closed or the vehicle is impounded, or after he has persuaded one of his few remaining gullible relatives/neighbors to give him a ride down to buy some more Night Train or Thunderbird. Some alcoholics are at their best in the first 2-3 hours of a binge following a dry spell.
It's just not funny. It's sad.
It truly amazes me how a primate of higher evolutionary order can blithely debase the aggregate advance of an entire species.
Captain has the excuse of alcoholic dementia, plus abandonment by his wife and children due to years of broken promises, missed dance recitals, and lies about the liquor store spending. CIC is just stupid.
For Captain, it's a daily battle against shaking hands, piles of empties in every room of the house, and a urine smell so powerful that social services won't come near.
This time next year bgamall4 will be saying it was all a hoax, and a Zionist plot and all you assholes will say is... "Oh Gary... sigh..."(wa wa WA)
This time next year bgamall4 will be saying it was all a hoax, and a Zionist plot and all you assholes will say is... "Oh Gary... sigh..."(wa wa WA)
Knock back a Thunderbird for us, rummy.
Wow, AF. Is it a reaction to the photo, or do you spout shit too?
Ellie at least people GET your schtick.
Disgusting how these sick people have the nerve to exist. Why can't they shut the fuck up?
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