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[quote=Anonymous]Ugh just read the rest of the thread.

No, hospice won’t kill your parent for you. Morphine is only provided to patients with certain illnesses, like cancer, that involve constant unremitting pain. There has been a crackdown on pain meds since the opioid epidemic, even in the hospice setting. The drugs are very carefully monitored - every hospice assignment I’ve worked over the last six years involved an audit of morphine or other opioids at every shift change. The hospice agency is usually very militant about this.

Yes in the history of medicine patients have been eased out by larger doses of morphine, but those are patients hours or at most days from death. Most medical professionals would never admit to having done this because it is illegal and in some views unethical - in any case a facility would fire anyone admitting to having done it, and the licensing board would expel them from the profession.

I’m sorry for your parent’s predicament and yours. Dementia is awful because the patient cannot make a rational choice to end their life. I’ve worked with a few very elderly patients who were cognitively intact and they made the conscious choice to stop taking meds, food and water - except moisture on their lips and tongue to ease discomfort. Death happens fairly quickly if a person stops eating and drinking, especially a frail person. Contrary to common misconception, fasting isn’t painful after the first day or two- folks who have done fasting for religious or cleansing purposes know this. It’s not a terrible way to go but a patient with dementia would not be able to make a conscious choice to go this way.[/quote]

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