Three weeks ago, I woke up in the ER after my partner, frightened by the amount of pain I was experiencing, called 911. Four paramedics virtually carried me down the sloping yard to the ambulance.
I have some vague memories of that. The hospital did nothing for me, so I left the next morning. Two weeks before that, I was in the same ER, massively dehydrated because I hadn’t eaten or had a drink in three days.
I had already been on palliative care for several years so I knew the hospital could really do nothing to treat my condition, but they could give me pain killers and did a full exam including an MRI which found a large mass on one of my kidneys.
That surprised me and it surprised the doctor that I had no indication of its presence. No pain, no other problem.
So another wasted hospital stay and another ER bill and I was anxious to get home.
Fortunately, we have a wonderful friend, Caren, who used to be the CPA who handled our corporate taxes. During the computer boom, I was writing a newspaper column for 25 years, reviewing computers and software for a total of 103 print magazines. With 18,000 paid articles and five books published with major houses, my life was pretty complicated.
Caren had come to pick me up from the hospital for the second time in four weeks. She was sitting there in jeans so old and washed so many times the knees were worn to threads. We got to talk for the first time in years. You see, I always tried to hire Caren’s kids to help on my ranch and lately the old house we use as a retirement home, which used to be the company warehouse but was just an ugly but solid old farmhouse.
Home Hospice
Caren was the third person in a few hours to mention the word “hospice.” She talked about the one she engaged to care for her elderly mother who had a broken hip and cancer. Hospice care at home meant her mother could leave the awful nursing home she, very reasonably, hated.
The very next morning, I called the hospice Caren recommended. Their intake person came within two hours, and while we chatted, I signed about fifty papers (probably really more like 5 or 6), giving my remaining life to the Medicare-paid hospice.
Within three hours after that, they had contacted two doctors, and the same intake person arrived with a “comfort package” that included Morphine — not the injected kind, but a small amount you can drink. It’s not something you get high on.
But within a few hours, I was fully in hospice care, right in my own recliner, where I write books and articles like this.
No More Hospital Visits
In return for my promise to never go to a hospital again (except if I had a wound requiring immediate hospital care), they would give me a routine visit from a nurse three times a week, or at 3 a.m. if I had an emergency. Everyone involved with the hospice seemed to be a young woman, even my on-call helper for getting in the shower is only 21.
Hospice care requires patients to no longer have any treatment to heal some condition. In other words palliative care which I was already on. Palliative care is only to keep the patient more comfortable.
As for the hospice people, all in all, they are the kindest people I have ever met. You might say they are “professionally kind,” a thought a cynical, 60-plus year reporter might have. But no, they are genuinely nice people who could easily get other medical jobs but choose to work with the part of the population that is dying. Nurses always work with sick or injured people, but hospice workers are with people they know in advance will not survive for long.
To be Continued
This story is for anyone caring for a sick, elderly person or a member of their family. By far, most people wait too long to enter hospice. They often die in a few days. I, on the other hand, should have months of comfort care.
Part of John McCormick’s “Last Deadline” series — reflections from a journalist writing through his final chapter.
Explore more from John McCormick and his books.
Series so far:
- Hospice, The Last DEADLINE of a Correspondent
- A Correspondent’s Notes: Day Two in Hospice
- Hospice Notes Day 3–4: Pain, Swelling, and the Relief of Oxygen
- Hospice Notes, Week Two: Pain, Cookies, and Letting Go of a Library
- Another Day in Hospice — A Good One This Time
- Hospice Notes: Good Days, Bad Days, and Broken Pipes
- The Mechanic, The Sailor, The Journalist, and The New Definition of Self-Reliance
- Dispatch From the Frontier: The Mechanics of the Long Sleep
- Good Days, Bad Days, and the “Hospice Paradox”
