Got Hospice on board

I posted last week deep in a hole of frustration and sadness, and a lot of people mentioned hospice. Mom want on board with hospice at the time. According to her, hospice gave her Mom (my grandma) morphine and then she died.

Anyway, her pulmonologist called me and said that Mom sent him a message on the patient portal asking about certain symptoms and things, and he said it was time to chat with Mom about hospice. So Mom asked me that the Dr said, and I told her, and we cried, and I made an appt for a hospice nurse to come visit (this hospice was hospital based).

The visit wasn't great. The woman was the unpleasant kind of blunt, and told Mom she'd be surprised if she lasted 6 months. Mom was not impressed. We asked a local nonprofit hospice to come and chat with us about palliative care and hospice. They can offer so much more through volunteers, and their paid staff, and she explained all the benefits of hospice to Mom and mom finally understood.

I'm so relieved to not have to be making these decisions alone- when Mom is constipated, or struggling to breathe, or otherwise unwell- there are people to help. We got the bathing / food / activities of daily living stuff sorted, it was sorting out the 20+ meds a day, the medical issues that Mom was asking me to make decisions about, the need for more medical attention than occasional video calls that we needed help with.

So now we begin a new season.