Posted by
deb on Sunday, March 18, 2007 2:01:28 AM
I did not know anything about Hospice until my sister was recently put into Hospice. Not because she was dying, but because she was in pain. We thought she was dying because they told us the symptoms of dying were that they quit eating and started sleeping more, and their breathing rate slows down. So her children put her into Hospice. They did not tell us that these symptoms were all caused by being over-medicated. Her sleeping breath rate was down to 8 per minute.
One day while she was in the hospital hospice, I told the nurses not to give her the Dilaudid which was in addition to the Phentynol patches she was on. Suddenly, my sister was alert and quite lucid, was able to eat, and drank more liquids in one day than she had in two weeks. When the doctor heard what I had done, she was very upset and told the nurses to put her back on the Dilaudid, because I was not a direct family member. We wrote the doctor a letter requesting that they try other medications that might not make her tired that she could not eat or drink. The doctor refused, saying she promised my sister to keep her from pain. My sister was not in pain - the patches were working well for her that day. She is now so drugged up that she has not eaten or able to drink anything for weeks, yet her vitals are normal, her blood oxygen is normal (LUNG CANCER).
They are killing her from dehydration and malnutrition. She has been drugged up like this for two months now. How much quality life did she have left it she had been treated for the pain with the proper medications instead of being over-medicated to the point of not being able to talk, eat or drink.
Do not put anyone into Hospice. They should be given treatment until the disease causes the body to shut down, not from being over-medicated which causes dehydrated and malnutrion.