I remember when my mom first told me that she had made the decision to go on hospice. She had wanted to wait to tell me face-to-face until I got home from work but as usual I pushed and she finally relented. I literally had to pull over at a rest stop between the school where I was teaching and my house because I was so upset and crying to the point I couldn't see out my windshield of my car. What I quickly came to learn was hospice didn't mean she was what they call eminently terminal meaning she wasn't going to die within the next 24 hours or even the next 24 days. One of our favorite things became that doctors had MD after their name not God. So many times people hear the word hospice and they automatically think the person is going to die tomorrow or sometime in the near future. What hospice actually means is there's nothing more that can be done medically for someone. A person on hospice can still live for however long he or she and God choose. The first seven months my mom was on hospice she still went to church, attended to concerts and made our annual pilgrimage to the Buena Vista in San Francisco for Saint Patrick's Day well she was in a wheelchair and on oxygen. All of this she was able to do because hospice controlled her pain with her bone metastases. The hospice AIDS came in gave her a bath and changed her sheets. The nurse would come a couple of times a week. They even had a volunteer come and sit with her so I could go run errands or have an actual night off. It was actually the volunteer who gave us the idea to have student nurses come from the local College and act as personal care aides. The volunteer was a nurse herself and was one of the nursing instructors at the local College. Hospice had a chaplain who came even though our church minister came as well to provide spiritual guidance. When my mom became bed bound hospice increase their visits. The hospice nurse even met me at would come at night time if there was an emergency with my mom. Hospice ordered equipment for my mom to make it easier to take care of her at home. And yes hospice was there at the end with not just my mom but with me. Don't be afraid of the word hospice or what it means.
