What is the answer here, how do you handle a Hospice Patient and survive it all?

Dealing with a dying patient under hospice care is rough mentally and emotionally. Each day you wake up, praying it will end for them, without pain and they will ease into the darkness and go to heaven.

They come home able to talk, or listen at least and you can communicate with them They are alert at times on and off and they can reply when you tell them you love them. You feed them, and change them and wash them many times a day.

Then one day they no longer wake up fully, they can’t eat or drink anymore, and you are stuck cleaning and changing a dying body that no longer can respond to you in anyway at all. It becomes a husk of the person that now, is not getting fed or drinking any fluids and you pray it will end each day for them. Yet, you have no control over how long they will last, that is up to God and a power greater than you or I to determine. There is a higher being above us all, that calls us when it is our time to go. So you find yourself walking in circles, looking for busy work to do. Or staring at a television screen or walking in circles in your yard, awaiting their end.

Then, comes the time, for compassionate medicines, they say to give to them so they feel no pain at all when washed or moved. The cleaning of their mouth, the listening to their breathing, as it becomes a rattle and slows over time. Now, hospice is not a pretty sight to live through with a dying spouse or relative of any kind. The one part of it is, it is covered in this case by medicare. Yet, I suffer each day I get up and can still hear her breathing, as it breaks my spirit, my heart and me emotionally and mentally and I find myself, praying for the Good Lord to take her, without pain or suffering. Only, time will tell I am told by Hospice Nurses and Nurse’s Aids.

Family come sand goes and discussions are had, regarding what she wanted when she dies. Simple she told me, for 28 years, as we loved and lived together, keep it simple.

She told me no big production, no big show for all to see. her family wants a memorial, I want peace. A memorial with flowers and pictures and allowing her only living child to speak is fine. I don’t want a crowd, I am not rich, so the cost is cazy when people die. Dying can be a very expensive expense for those left behind to pay for. Unless the person has a high class life insurance coverage for it. In this case there is no such thing. So I shall have to pay for all that will be done to say goodbye.

I find myself, slowly wishing it was over already and praying each day she goes, soonand peacefully. I am not young anymore myself, and each moment and day she is still with me barely breathing, is pulling me towards the abyss myself. It drains me emotionally, it weighs on my mind and heart and soul, as I try hard to hold on and do what is right and respectfull for her.

To watch Nurse’s and nurse’s Aids come and go each day and help them turn her for cleaning and then diaper her each day is killing me. To get up duringthe nights and check on her to check if she is breathing or gone hourly or every three hours is killing me. How long can a person live without water or food?

Day four has begun now her breathing is shaallow and short and there isa slight rattle to it. Her eyes never open now, she lays in silence. Her mouth opens and hangs open, and I close it each time I see it. yet she keeps going, minute after minute and hour after hour and day after day. A husk of herself and it is destroying me inside too.

How many days I ask the Nurses of Hospice and The aids too. None can say a definitive number of days even, each person is different they say. So, each day I wake up and check her, feed her morphine and watch her. My sister is here with me as we hold a watch over her, taking turns, getting up to check her. The television runs constantly as wesearch for shows or movies or specials to watch to distract us from it all. I go outside for fresh air and walk my driveway in circles for air and and exercise and to keep busy and distracted. I empty boxes we had stored for 21 years throwing away garnage and seperating what can be tag slaed or sold online. Knowing in the end i need to sell the home and get out into a small one bedroom apartment in a complex that handles the disabled and ederly each month.

I continue to seek help, I continue to ask questions, I continue to pray it will end soon enough and that it will end in peace for her and I and all involved who love her. We all need relief now from the whole thing, but we don’t control a damn thing, except trying to make her as comfortable as possible as she goes. No control at all really just the morphine is all and letting the aids and nurses in and out daily or family members who come to say goodbye and are grieving like I am.

I know many families are doing the same today, using hospice instead of facility care for familiy members. The cost is less for the families and the facilities like Nursing Homes that do it charge far too much to care for them, and do far too little for them actually.

I pray daily, it will end, I pray for her safe painless transition and for her comfort as he passes. But most I pray it will happen soon, the longer she hangs on the worse it gets for me. as her surviving spouse, I amhere constantly, and I worry wheither I can survive her going. I am not healthy myself.

Is there any answers as to when it shall end? Is there any signs to look for? I ave no idea folks, I feel I am being sucked down into the abyss with her at times andhave to walk away, to get air to breath, by going outside.

What is the answer here, how do you handle a Hospice Patient and survive it all?