Gone were the noisy IV pumps and blood pressure cuff; instead, morphine and the quiet company of loved ones.
‘The hospice experience was starkly different from the previous three months that our mother … spent in the hospital undergoing treatment for the cancer.’My brother’s text the morning of Aug. 2 was urgent: “Her breathing has just now shifted. … I think we’re closer, not there but closer.”
The hospice experience was starkly different from the previous three months that our mother, a highly regarded nurse working in a prenatal clinic at Los Angeles General Medical Center, spent in the hospital undergoing treatment for the cancer. She had endured surgeries, infections, tube feeding and chemotherapy, in hopes of a cure or, failing that, a year or two more with her grandchildren.
Nursing colleagues streamed in to pay moving tribute. My children stayed for hours at a time, free to move indoors and outdoors. The pastor from our old Lutheran church brought over her service puppy-in-training and read from the Bible. Both she and Dr. Finly Zachariah, another City of Hope palliative care expert, told me they encourage doctors and patients to discuss end-of-life wishes and advance directives soon after diagnosis with a serious illness, or well before that.
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