I know that many people have good experiences with Hospice and I think there are situations where their care and help is a godsend. If you have had experience with them and it was a good thing, great for you. Unfortunately, we did not have a good experience with them at both the Hospice House Dave went to, nor when he was home and they came in to assist. I wish we had never been involved with them and I will always believe he would not have died when he did had they not been involved. If anything, they only hastened the inevitable and were no comfort to any of us.
Somehow the staff at Hospice misunderstood why he was there. He was not there for end of life which is what they seemed to think They were supposed to help get his pain meds regulated and the Hospice doctor put him on a Dilaudid pump. Dilaudid was one of the drugs that he was having the bitggest problem with problem with because it was making him go too deeply into an almost semi-conscious state, so putting him on the pump was a HUGE mistake. Instead of getting one small dose every 5-6 hours, he was getting a shot of it every 30 minutes. I thought that was a mistake, but I wasn't the doctor, so I just went along with the flow.
After three days of being at Hospice, I got a frantic call that he needed to go to the emergency room because they couldn't wake him up. I rode with him in the ambulance to CMC, where we spent the next 9 hours trying to wake him up. The resident that was attending him said he was a victim of "polypharma" which is too many medicines for his system to handle. In other words, they very nearly OD'd him at the Hopice facility.
Dave was admitted to the hospital and stayed there for two nights while they continued to monitor him and get his meds figured out so that his pain was at a managable level. He ended up with two meds, Methadone and Dexamethasone, which worked really well. That was down from the 9 meds we were trying to administer to him at home. He was still really weak but after those two days, he was almost his old self. That was a blessing, to have him back like that.
During his stay at Hospice, somehow his clavicle and two ribs were broken. Those bones were fine the week before he went because he had just had some scans that showed the bone lesions in those places but the bones were still intact. I will believe til my dying day that the nurses who got him up to change his bed broke those bones with their rough treatment. Dave was a big guy and almost dead weight in his semi-conscious state, so they just kind of pulled and pushed him to get him into a wheelchair when they needed him out of the bed. He started complaining about his shoulder hurting about 2 hours after one of those incidents. It bothers me a lot that we trusted those people to help and they only harmed.
Once we got him home and into Hospice care, things did not improve. I will believe forever that Dave would not have died when he did if Hospice had not been involved in his care. If anything, they hastened his death but I can't dwell on that now. The memories of that are just too painful.
