Hospice, does anyone else feel like hospice killed their loved one?

Your profile says that you're caring for your 43 year old mom in a nursing home.
I'm a bit confused. Why would your mom at that young age be in any type of nursing facility, and is she the one you think was "killed" by hospice?
So until you explain a bit more, all I can say at this point is that hospice doesn't "kill" anyone, and I'm sorry for your loss.

Do you want to tell us what happened? It might help you process this difficult time.

We hear this over and over again on AC.
Hospice is end of life care. When an MD orders it he recognizes that end of life is near and may come within 6 months time.
Patients are often suffering from pain and anxiety.
Hospice's mission is to provide an end to suffering. They give medications for suffering, anxiety, depression, shortness of breath and etc. They will give these medications IF the patient is restless or uncomfortable EVEN IF THESE MEDICATIONS HASTEN DEATH by some moments, minutes, hours, even days.

I find it very sad, when families say this. I can only refer them to Hospice again, who will give them outreach to support by groups on grieving.
Experts on grief tell us that people will go to any lengths to avoid walking into the grieving process. They will often choose to blame doctors, nurses, hospitals, things done or not done, and ESPECIALLY hospice, which is there at the end. This allows them to feel anger instead of grief.

I am sorry for your loss. I hope you will reach out for comfort. And I hope already that there is at least some comfort in a life well lived, in memories, in the fact the person you so loved is at peace and there need no longer be pain, and you need no longer stand witness to torment.

No. I feel like CHF and advanced dementia killed my mother at 95, and hospice helped keep her comfortable during her end of life process.

I feel like a brain tumor killed my father at 91 and hospice helped keep him comfortable during his end of life process.

Realize that Medicare STOPS paying hospice once a patient passes away, so what would be their goal in "killing" them? Not to mention euthanasia is against the law and hospice companies would've been closed down decades ago had your feelings been valid.

No, that is for end of life care.

We get this question and stories many times here.

I think Alva's post says it all.

I was very relieved when my husband went into Hospice and died, he was out of pain, finally.

Seek counseling if need be.

What happened Ilovejzs? Are you strong enough to tell us? Did you Mom have ca and was very sick? It's so hard to watch someone leaving us whether they are in hospice or hospice in home. I think you must be really young and this has been very frightning for you to see and hear. I lost my father and I was 45, he was 71 and it took me a very long time to grieve his death. Because it doesn't seem fair that they would leave us behind.
There is a group called Beyond Blue, it could be something else now but it is an online support group much like aging care. You can pour your heart out there and people understand and you read stories of other people's grief and how to take things day to day.
Not saying you shouldn't stay here, though but wherever you feel like expressing your feelings.
For sure keep reaching out, keeping talking to people, maybe your Dad and other family or close friends. I wish I could give you a (((hug))) Please be gentle with yourself dear one.

No. Hospice care isn’t an evil scheme to kill people.

My mother died at home from cancer, aged 78, with the GP being the equivalent of hospice. Our GP was away, and a visiting locum gave her a large dose of morphine in a morphine driver. I am fairly sure that it hastened her death 24 hours later. If so, it was by just a day or two. She had no pain at the end, and was largely unconscious. I was very glad for her and for myself and my sisters that it happened like that. Prolonging her pain for many hours or days would not have been kind or loving.

Remember that if hospice did indeed hasten her death, your loved one would still have died very soon. Be kind and loving to her memory, and to yourself. Yours, Margaret

I feel like hospice helped my father at a time when he was so very tired and exhausted from years of slow, insidious heart failure. They had no interest in killing him, for the minute he died they ceased to be paid. They provided him with comfort, compassion, and competent care in his final weeks. What more could any of us expect? It was beyond sad to see my beloved dad go, but knowing his wishes I could never want it to be different. I’m sorry for whatever you’ve experienced and wish you peace

@ilovejzs Yes. Euthanasia by hospice. What these people don't realize is that everyone in hospice isn't in agonising pain. A lot of people were still very active but we're elected to hospice based soley on their diagnosis. Yes even a former hospice worker described how they would be prompted to find as many older people as possible with certain conditions, or possible conditions to basically "flip" for profits.

This happened to my mother. No one will validate you if their loved one was in agony at the time of hospice. However you'd be stunned how many people have the same story as you and I.

PLEASE message me if you want to discuss your experience. One Love!! ☮️

Freeme, OP has only asked this one question and has not responded.

I am afraid that we get these sadly misinformed posts all the time, yes.

Often family members are at odd when a person requests end of life care. Those not in favor of ending a hopeless fight often become quite "unreasonable" and in their grief their thinking patterns tend to go a tad wonky.

I can only say this.
Hospice is end of life care and it is ordered by a phyician at the request of a patient, or suggest by MD when there is no longer any hope of treatment and a patient is expected to die.
This care provides COMFORT and this is often through medications to prevent agitation, worry, sleeplessness and difficulty with bowels, bladder, phlegm production, swallow but MOST ESPECIALLY WITH PAIN.
Pain medications are given in palliative care and in Hospice care in greater amounts than is normally done due to addiction concerned with other patients. And if there is any pain or agitation, in hospice, said medications WILL BE GIVEN.
These medications will be given whether or not they may hasten death by some few seconds, minutes, hours or even days. They are given to provide relief from needless torment in a dying patients.

If you continue, after speaking with Hospice, MD, grief counselors, to have trouble processing your feelings please do consider cognitive therapist of Social Worker in private practice who is working with life transitions.

I am answering Freeme here. OP has not been back since they posted.

As Alva says the word Hospice means end of life. The person is dying from whatever they have wrong with them. All life supporting medication is discontinued. Now if done in the home, family is responsible for giving Morphine when needed. So if the person does not want it, family does not need to give it. Morphine is also given to ease breathing. Anxiety is part of the dying process. So meds are given for that. Hospice is comfort care.

Now if Hospice is done in a facility, you may have staff whose orders say every 4 hours. Since the Hospice nurse is not there every day, the facility staff members need to follow the orders given. The patient can ask what is being given and refuse it. You cannot be forced to take meds.

What killed the ‘loved one’ was the health issue that meant they were offered hospice. Not the hospice. Duh!

As a full time family care giver for my brother who is currently under hospice care in my home, I spend the majority of my time ensuring they don't kill him until he is truly ready to have his death expedited (what Hospice excels at). Hospice seems to be quite frustrated that we don't "fit the mold" of what they're accustomed to encountering with dying patients and oblivious family members. They keep trying to speed things up, but until he is ready to go, they can just sit on their hands and wait.

Unfortunately, I have the experience of watching them basically euthanize my grandmother and uncle, so I'm better prepared this time around.

OP, it seems from your posts that you don’t think Hospice murdered your relations who were really OK, more that they made their deaths quicker and you didn’t think that the deaths needed to be quicker. Hospice medications usually speed up deaths for people who are in pain, are more or less unconscious, and are clearly at the end of their lives. They did for my own mother, and I think she ‘lost’ about 2 days of the dying process from cancer – which I don’t regret.

Why do you think that your brother ‘isn’t ready’? Has he told you so?

OP @lealonnie1:

Why "hire" hospice and not "fire" them? Because, as a caring family member, you're convinced of its complete necessity by the medical community. For low income families, it's the only resource available to you for someone who is in need of on-going end of life care while you wait for whatever governmental assistance you may get to be approved. Because trusted medical professionals convinced an exhausted, bereaved family that their loved one was going to be suffering endlessly should he go home without hospice care and that this was for the best.

So yes, if he were in agony, I'd have no problem with hospice doing what it does best, putting him out of his misery as quickly as possible. BUT, guess what happens (and probably happens more often than you think) - the doctor's prognosis on timing of his deterioration was off. He has not deteriorated the way they said he would or as quickly as they said he would. Is he still terminal? Yes. Does he still qualify for hospice? Yes. Is he still without any options medically? Yes. Is he still able to eat for himself? Yes. Is he still able to go to the bathroom by himself? Yes. Is he able to still go play cards with his friends? Yes. But, is he still in need of some of the other services provided by hospice? Yes.

ALL of that is true, but what else is true is that when he asks for simple care for simple issues he's experiencing, the answer seems to always be "morphine" or "percocet" or "xanax." Not antibiotics for a stomach virus. Not Tylenol for the fever that accompanied it. None of those things until we demanded he be seen by the doctor and not just given what the nurse wanted to give him - narcotics to "ease" his suffering.

Hospice provided the support and meds that my MIL needed to keep her comfortable and at home. (In retrospect, not a great plan, keeping her at home--but that's water under the bridge.)

Her comfort meds were Xanax, Valium and Tramadol. No morphine b/c she wasn't in any pain.

From being placed under Hospice care to her death was about a year, exactly. Hospice most assuredly did NOTHING to hasten her death.

My FIL's oncologist gave him a whopping dose of morphine at the end of his life. He asked the 'kids' if they would allow him to do this to help ease his discomfort in struggling to breathe. I saw him pull the biggest syringe I've ever seen out of his pocket and stood with his back to the family and injected this morphine into the IV. (He was shielding the 'kids' from seeing this happen.)

FIL passed within 10 minutes. I spoke with the Dr afterward and thanked him and he said "you saw what I did, then?" I said 'yes, and thank you so much for your compassion'. I never told the 'kids'.

Hospice can be, and often is, a true godsend. May not feel like it at the moment--but what's the point in hanging on to life for one or two more days, in agony and misery--just to say you were tough?

OP, I know you didn’t say ‘murdered’, but killing someone usually is called ‘murder’.

Your experience is different from most posters, who have had good experiences with hospice. I’m trying to get my head around whether a) you have a particularly inappropriate hospice provider in your area or b) you don’t believe in shortening an inevitable death process when most people would go with it if it was a side effect of providing important pain relief. You called it ‘euthanasia’, but that’s another word that can be applied in a wider range of cases than the Switzerland model – to any choice that leads to a death that could be considered ‘merciful’ compared with the alternative, like shooting compared with death by torture.

If you really think that a) is what is happening in your area, you probably should do something about it. And ‘something’ doesn’t mean posting on a national/ international forum in a way that upsets a lot of people dealing with b). Can you think about it this way? Yours with genuine concern, Margaret.

I think hopise killed my loved one it's called physian assisted suicide they give them four meds over and over and it coma tost them my girl was only there for seven days I was trying to take her back home and seven or eight nurse where in room she was up and talking I go to store come back and she is taking last breath

Nope! We didn’t feel as if hospice killed our mom. She was dying.

Mom received excellent care from hospice for our mom. They kept her comfortable until the very end.

Hospice care is comfort care for the dying. They aren’t in business to save lives or prolong the inevitable.

My mother was definitely not interested in prolonging her life in a way, shape or form. She had suffered long enough.

She lived a very long life with Parkinson’s disease. The end stages of Parkinson’s disease are brutal.

She was extremely grateful to receive hospice care.

It’s very important to view hospice care in the proper context. Mom died in peace.

They provide a social worker and clergy for additional support.

Not all hospice providers are the same. I am sorry if you were dissatisfied with yours.

Wishing you peace as you mourn the loss of your loved one.

I will also add that my oldest brother who died in 2013 was like a cat with nine lives.

He walked out of hospice the first go round. It wasn’t his time yet. He wasn’t over medicated or anything like that.

The next time he entered his end of life hospice care home, it was his time and he died peacefully.

If Hospice "killed" my Husband they did a rather poor job of it and it took them 3 years to do it.
While they were slowly "killing" him they had a Nurse come in each week. She would order medications and check him out.
A CNA would come 2 sometimes 3 times a week to give him a shower, order supplies.
We got visits from a Social Worker, a Chaplain and a Volunteer a few times.
We got all the equipment that I needed to SAFELY care for him.

I think the Alzheimer's and Vascular dementias did a "better" job of killing him.

I felt that way when my father was in-home hospice many years ago. The nurses were never able to be reached. It was a horrible experience for me. However, last year when my husband was dying, his doctor recommended an inpatient hospice center. I finally consented and it was a beautiful experience. They took wonderful care of my husband during his remaing days. I was with him as his wife and not his caregiver. Not all hospice programs are created equally. I have changed my mind on the hospice experience.

I have both positive and negative feelings toward hospice. My mother (80) was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and given 6 weeks to 6 months as she opted for no treatment. Since it was during Covid, we requested that Hospice come in to meet my parents and set a schedule for coming weeks and months just so they would be familiar. On her first visit, hospice nurse told my mother stop taking her blood thinner that she had been taking since her heart attack 10 years prior. When I questioned the nurse afterwards on that decision, she reminded me that they are not to take measures to prolong life and tried to tell me that it was a cholesterol drug versus a blood thinner. Within 3 days of stopping, my mother had a stroke. Truth be told, she started having symptoms almost immediately, but we did not recognize them. We did not get 6 weeks. We got 2 weeks. However, on a very positive note, the hospice care giver that came to the home after she passed was the sweetest and most sensitive human being I have ever encountered. She made one of the most difficult moments in my adult life a bit easier. Overall, I know they provide an invaluable service.

It’s very normal to feel this emotionally. I hope rationally you understand no one killed your loved one except the disease they had. HUGS

These conversations are always interesting and controversial.

Just a heads up though, this post is from December 2023 and the OP has not responded to this thread at all.

Looks like we have all been chatting about this topic amongst ourselves without an OP.

Not that it matters all that much if the OP isn’t around, as long as it sparks a valuable discussion about a relevant topic.

Yes! I 100% believe hospice killed my mother. The hospice lead flat out lied about what would be offered IF we put my mother in hospice. She was still in her right mind so ultimately it was her decision. She stated she wanted to continue treatment!
the hospice nurse overstepped, changed orders, refused my mom treatment. I had to go all the way up to the hospital administrator to get her off my mother’s case. She then confronted me, throwing a tantrum in front of my mother making my sick mom cry. It’s obvious this woman was use to intimidating patients and wasn’t use to anyone knowing their patient rights!
the administration had to double check her, as she has gone in and cancelled
orders for my mom. Some access, she shouldn’t have even had (cancelling items the Dr ordered!) This was opposite of our experience with my husband’s grandmother. So it’s not all hospice but it does happen!!

I thought the nightmare was over. When I went home that night, she went back and bullied my elderly father into signing papers! My mom was sent home with morphine and hospice came one time and claimed the weather was too bad (it snowed) to come out! Roads were clear as I went there. Once they gave her morphine and other sedatives, she went from awake and talkative to sleeping all the time. Keep in mind my mother could walk, go to the bathroom with assistance & feed herself. She said her pain was a 2 out of 10!! They told my dad the morphine schedule and dose unbeknownst to me and while I was at work, she passed. I believe they over dosed her. She did not want this! So yes, all these hospice workers jumping to defense, but just like every industry there ARE bad ones out there. Some are FOR PROFIT and not in it for the right reasons. Something I didn’t know until dealing with our horrible experience.

Yes. And I am not sure if I will ever forgive myself. The doctor had previously exaggerated issues that were not in her wheel house. Only to have specialists confirm the extreme “diagnosis” was not accurate (for example, she said my mom had heart failure, which then caused the oncologist to hold my mothers cancer meds (which WERE working) until tests were done to confirm the treatment wasn’t damaging her heart. The cardiologist said, “while your mother’s heart is a little weak and we should watch it, she does not have heart failure. There are also no blockages and zero toxicity”.
That is not the only extreme misleading the primary doctor had said/done.
So when my mom was declining in the hospital because of poor care, I was desperately trying to get her released to rehab. But day after day, the doctor had a reason not to. She finally said there was nothing else they could do. I was so mentally and emotionally exhausted and I agreed to move her to hospice house.

There are positive hospice experiences.
But what those that have had that (and especially those that are insanely rude to those of us hurting) don’t realize is that too often, hospice is prematurely encouraged. The reasons are unknown. I tried to reach out to the doctor for closure but she didn’t reply.
In these situations, the patients aren’t actually dying from their disease or at a natural end of life place. They are literally dehydrated to death. The extreme medication is to help with THAT pain and the effects. They die within 3-4 days NOT from the disease, but because that’s how long we can’t go any longer without water.
My mom was in the hospital because she was on meds for c-diff and had gotten a UTI. A PET scan showed the cancer meds were working. The reasons for the doctor’s refusal to discharge were actually occurring BECAUSE she was in the hospital.
There are more details, so don’t come at me with assumptions.
I will always feel that if I chose to bring her home (instead of hospice house) and I obviously wouldn’t have neglected her like the hospital staff, continued her medications, and actually fed and hydrated her…that she would have had regained an acceptable quality of life to have more time.
I also wish I would have never let them admit her on Oct 22. I wouldn’t have had I known they wouldn’t be keeping her clean (which would never allow a UTI to resolve), they wouldn’t ensure she was eating, etc.
Her decline was avoidable. Her issues were resolvable. She didn’t need to be moved to hospice house on Oct 27 to dehydrate to death on Oct 31.

Yes. The nurses at hospice house cared for her well. EXCEPT the final time she had awareness was devastating. My son came to town and my mom was so excited. But we left the room because they were about to give her a bed bath.
We told her we’ll be back in as soon as they’re done. When we could go in, the nurse said she medicated her because my mom was asking “where are all the people”? That nurse thought my mom was being delusional. But WE were the people!!! My mom was so excited to see and talk to her grandson and his wife…but that dosing was the turning point and she was never alert again, except expressions of discomfort in which they would increase the amount and shorten time gap of the drugs.
The point for many of us is that GOING there was premature and in my case, I feel like I was gaslit into the decision.

For others that had the bad experience, you are not alone. I see you.
For those that had a great experience, I am sincerely so happy for you.
For those in the 2nd category that feel the need to generalize survivors’ experiences or even think hospice does not have various implementations, just be happy with your situation and leave your condescending remarks to grieving individuals somewhere near your back pocket. When people reach out for support, just leave it to posters that will provide that.
Again, I know there are positive experiences. Sadly, there is another painful side for others.

Like a bad algae bloom, this one always rises to the top and floats around a while.

This post needs to be closed. These old ones pop up because someone answers them.