Reply to How do I handle my boyfriend's terminal illness?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, it sounds like you and your boyfriend do not understand what "hospice" really means. Hospice is a designation that allows for a particular kind of care to be provided to a patient who is terminally ill. My experience with hospice care (for 2 grandparents with various issues) was essentially as follows:

When my grandfather decided that he wanted to discontinue treatments for bone cancer, he, our family and his doctor worked with the hospice company to get him care in the home. Two doctors must declare the patient to be terminally ill with less than 6 months to live (which was the scariest part for him). It did not mean that after 6 months, they would discontinue care. It did not mean that they would not treat his symptoms, that he would be denied pain medication (quite the opposite) or that the system would "give up on him". It just triggered another network of support services that he would not previously have had access to. A hospital bed was installed in his living room so that he could raise and lower his torso. A hospice nurse came to the house every day to assist him with personal hygiene matters (my grandmother was 4'10" and unable to assist her much larger husband in this capacity). In terms of his treatment, the only thing that really changed was that they stopped trying to fight the cancer and focused their efforts on reducing his suffering - which is important with a cancer patient as radiation and chemo have side effects and surgery often requires long recovery periods that do NOT reduce suffering. Part of the hospice care he received was also related to his psychological and spiritual process of coming to terms with dying. I honestly have no idea how that was for him as he kept those conversations intensely private. He lived about about 4 months at home and died peacefully in his sleep.

I don't know if your boyfriend would qualify given the nature of his illness, but the thing that I learned from my experience with my grandfather (and later my grandmother, which was slightly different in that she was on a ventilator and needed to be in a home for that) was that hospice does not = death sentence. It just means that you are focusing on a different kind of treatment. It is actually peaceful and quite comforting and can make a quality of life possible that was not previous possible.

Thoughts and prayers with you. I'm glad you're in counseling. Sounds like your boyfriend could also use some counseling.[/quote]

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