Also for those who haven't had to experience it and are quick to judge, here's my experience:
Both my parents insisted they wanted to die at home, when the time came. Mom had a brain-bleed stroke. She started recovering, and was doing fairly well with 24/7 home health care, paid for by long-term insurance after the $50K deductible was paid out of pocket. This was of course affecting dad, who was unable to help her because he was unwell. Depression ruled the household, it was just the two of them plus mom's aides.
My sister called one night, in the middle of the night, to tell me to get down there ASAP, mom was in the hospital and it wasn't looking good. We drove 4 hours - mom was mostly unresponsive. But they cleared her for home hospice care. So we got her home, and I spent the next 5 days watching her die. They put her on a catheter because moving her to change her Depends was so painful - during her hours at the hospital she fell and broke her back.
She became unresponsive, and finally stopped breathing. I literally watched it happen. There was nothing I could do to help her.
Dad was there too - and he decided at that point - that if he is ever unresponsive like that, but still alive, he wants to die in a facility, not at home. He doesn't want me or my sister to have to endure that a second time.
This happened this past October.
I -highly- recommend that anyone whose loved one is near the end of their life, if the loved one never made any arrangements for home care - let them go peacefully in a facility that exists to help them through that time. There is nothing "peaceful" about dying at home, when your family is there to see it happen. The home itself becomes a place of profound sadness, and whoever else is still living in that home has a 24/7 memory of that moment that they can't ever push aside. Dad can't look at the space in the living room where Hospice had the hospital bed so mom could hear the TV and be with family while she was dying.
No family "needs" that kind of heartbreak.
|