WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2023

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2023 - HOSPICE

Yesterday, I sat with my friend as a hospice agent sat with her and asked if she was ready for hospice care.

Maybe the question should be, "Are you ready to die?".

My father died a day before he was scheduled to go into hospice; my mother was in hospice for a couple of months before she died.

TWO TYPES OF CARE:

Restorative and palliative care are the two types of care I want to write about today.

Most of us (all of us?) are familiar with 'restorative care'.  As a child, if I scraped my knee, my mother practiced restorative care (without a license) by putting mercurochrome (or iodine) on the scrape and covering it with a bandage.  

If you have an upset stomach, take some Pepso Bismol as restorative care - get the stomach acids neutralized.  (Or some similar product).  

Sometimes, restorative care requires more extensive treatment.  I'm doing some physical therapy to help my balance and my flexibility.  Heart attacks may require surgery to open clogged blood vessels.  Cancer may require surgery or chemotherapy.

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But, at the end of life, it may be that restorative treatment just doesn't "restore" your health.  The years of bodily abuse have taken their toll.  

My friend indicated that she smoked cigarettes for 35 years - and she has been diagnosed with COPD and Lung Disease.  She also has had several cancers - including tongue cancer two years ago, where part of her tongue was removed.  Recently, she found several spots on her tongue that seem to be indicative that the tongue cancer is back (or wasn't solved two years ago).

The tongue cancer treatment of removing part of the tongue was excruciating, and it took months to have the tongue "restored" to regular functioning.  (Months of liquid diets and great pain.)

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So, what about hospice?  It is a way to help a person confront the end of life. Hospice care focuses on quality of life when a cure is no longer possible or the burdens of treatment outweigh the benefits.

My friend and I read a book about “Being Mortal” - with a quote, “It’s one damn thing after another.”   In our aging years, that seems to be true.  You get diabetes; then you get heart disease; then maybe cancer, or you fall and break your hip. Perhaps falling becomes frequent - and every fall weakens the rest of your body. 

And the last quote is familiar - there are two sure things in life - death and taxes.  We all are going to die.  Maybe we don’t want to die. Perhaps we want to hang around to see our grandchildren grow up, graduate, and marry. Perhaps we are scared about death.  Is there really a heaven and hell?  Will I go to hell?  (That is between you and however you view God - They / The Force / It / The  Ultimate - or just nothing).

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How do we grasp the ultimate?  How do we face death?  

Am I going to face honesty on that night?  I hope so.  (I haven’t died before.) 

Some people (especially with cancer) go through a long period of deteriorating health - and great pain.  Wouldn’t it be better to help with pain management (I don’t know all of the options - so morphine is one)?  Wouldn’t it be “dying with dignity to let the person enjoy some better days on those days to death?

I knew a friend in Connecticut who went to a hospice facility on Long Island Sound.  They had a large picture window overlooking the oceans and the Thimble Islands, and they could see the waves, watch the weather fronts come in, and see the fishing ships come and go.  I understand it was a bucolic/picturesque spot to die.

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Death will come to me.  I don’t want to be morbid, but I know it will happen.  How do I want to go?  Cremation?  Traditional Burial?  Cemetery Plot?  Will I have a standard service?  Will I have an orchestra playing one of three (or all three) pieces - Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony final movement, Grieg’s The Last Spring (where the composer is picturing the last spring coming to the cold northern Norwegian landscape), or Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite Finale (where the Firebird comes back to life.  

Or just die a simple death and be down.  

[At this point, separated from my family and not expecting my son, daughter, and grandchildren to come to a funeral, I’m tending to think of a simple death and cremation].

Or … the famous Irish blessing: ““May you be in heaven a full half-hour before the devil knows you're dead.”

However, your ending will be - you will die, and avoiding thinking of death might leave you unprepared. 

May God bless your senior days with love, joy, happiness, contentment, and peace!!!

LOVE WINS
LOVE TRANSFORMS
KAREN ANNE WHITE, ©, DECEMBER 6, 2023