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[quote=Anonymous]I’m a caregiver for a hospice patient and have been for about 15 months now - she is taking her time dying, as hospice patients often do.

This is a nonprofit organization providing hospice services. The list of services she gets includes meals on wheels - she won’t eat them, the food isn’t up to her expectations but she has to participate to get all the other services. Other services include twice weekly nurse visits, weekly massage (stopped recently because they lost their massage therapist but will start again when they rehire), daily PCA for morning showering etc., 38 hours weekly of PCA assistance (that’s me), all meds and most supplies provided gratis - she pays out of pocket for Purewick so she doesn’t have to sleep in a diaper, and she pays for some of her own supplies like pads and depends and wipes but hospice provides gloves and any kind of higher level medical supplies including a pressure mattress, hospital bed, transfer chair, walker, etc. My patient is lucky to have an eldest daughter who is a retired RN and is the offspring with whom she lives and her primary caregiver who steps up all the days that PCAs and nurses fail to show due to personal illness, family illness, vacation, holiday etc. It’s a huge commitment, had stolen her entire life for the last few years because she cared for her dad until he died a few years ago and I can see it is stealing longevity from her life - most long term family caregivers suffer health issues and many die prematurely, it’s massively stressful. She only gets ~4 hours sleep per night.

Hospice services can be wonderful but I’m sure that isn’t always the case. As with anything, benefits flow from doing careful research.[/quote]

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