What did you do to take care of a hospice patient and how did you handle it?

Today is august 7th, 2021. I know, I sound like a broken record, here. But, having a spouse in Hospice Care here at home, on a Do Not Rescuitate, is emotionally hard on me. We have spent 28 years together as a couple and husband and wife. So to see her end in this way is rough, emotionally and mentally on me.

What do I do now, well every three hours the morphine syringe is given by me to stop any pain she has. Then I try to go through our belongings we havent touched in 21 years in our garage. Emptying boxes, trying to figure what her daughter may wnat, what can be tag saled or sold online, is not easy.

Nurse’s Aid come and go twice a day, changing and cleaning her is all. She doesn’t eat anymore and I must eat and sleep myself and remember I wil have a life still left to live when she is passed and gone. I miss her horriably right now and she is still here breathing away in a hospital bed. I can’t imagine what it will be like, once she passes.

I did not make the choice, to bring her home for Hospice easily, Nursing Homes and Rehab Facilities charge three hundred and fifty dollars a day, to watch them die. All they do is what you or a Nurses Aid can do at home for her, wash her, and watch her.

I was hesitatant to bring her home at first, then hesitant to give her the first morphine shot. I called Hospice to ask if I should do so first and went through the protocols, because I didnt want to without guidance and their permission.

Each day her breathing gets shorter and closer to the end, I check her hourly. I watch Television, I write blogs, I play x-box games and i walk my yard and driveway. Trying to keep myself going and remembering after she is gone I will still be here and have to carry on alone.

What more can I do, I can’t just get in a car and drive away to a store or to see anyone else for visiting or for friendship or companionship. To me that would be wrong as hell. So I sit listening to news and watching movies, bingeing television shows, writing blogs and in the end when all else fails playing video games and reading books. There is nothing more left to do.

When a loved one is in such a state as bordering on death, it is rough on the surviving spouse. we have to make sure they get cleaned and given the comfort meds at the end. Otherwise, they don’t and the pain can be horrible with a cancer patient. So, to prevent the pain, morphine is given, as, they go slowly.

Am I pitying myself, or complaining for myself no. I try to stay strong around her and cry by myself in other rooms where she can no longer hear me at all. I talk to the nurses and nurse’s aids and of course my sister and her daughter if they are around or call. Or even her own sister if she texts or calls. Otherwise it is me and I am alone to do all I can for her, here.

I know there are many others, who have taken care of Hospice Patients at home like I am, so I am not alone in doing so. I also know they survived doing so, so I must also, but the emotional burden and stress can get to me at times. Even though I cry a lot it doesn’t make it easier.

So let me ask, if you read this blog, Have any of you been through this experience of Hospice care for a loved one at home? And if you did, can you tell me what to do to make it through?

What did you do to take care of a hospice patient and how did you handle it? Any Help or comments would be helpful!