I once thought I was pretty smart when it came to the medical world. After all, my former husband and daughter are both physicians. Well, then how come I never knew that a hospital was not a place to go to die?? I have just experienced this first hand and need to share this with you.
The doctor’s informed me and my sisters our dad was not going to get better. The palliative care team wanted to speak with my sisters and myself. They suggested (actually pushed us) we put our dad into a hospice program. This made sense, because he was not going to get better. Little did we understand the real reason behind the big push. They wanted him out of their facility. We questioned them about why they would want to move him, if he was so terminal. They said it was, because he was going to be put on hospice and he would need to be moved to another facility that dealt with hospice patients. Well, no facility wanted him, because he had been tested for swine flu and, even though, they told us the results appeared negative, he was “persona non grata”. They told us they would find him a place as we would have to move him. I couldn’t believe my ears. He was close to death and we had to move him. It was sometime during this shuffle that we learned the doctors had given him about 24-48 hours to live. Why with such a little time left did they have to move him? They found him a place all right, far from our homes. It took all day for them to do so. By the time they were ready to discharge him about 36 plus hours had elapsed and he was comatose. At that point I said to my sisters that we should just take him home to die in a warm, familiar and comforting environment. They quickly ordered an ambulance to transport him. They loaded him onto a gurney in a completely non-responsive state. As they were moving him from the bed to the gurney the sheet under him tore and he was dropped onto the journey quite roughly. He was not responsive and I couldn’t believe they were actually moving him. We did not think he would live long enough to get home. He did, however. We were told a hospice nurse would be there to meet us. HaHa. She did not appear until nearly an hour later, when it was obvious to us that he was close to the end. He died quite shortly thereafter. Her only role was to listen to his heart to verify the time of death. We, all, found it interesting, however, that she said she could not believe the hospital had discharged him. To discharge him, he would have needed to have been stable and he WAS NOT. Why then was he moved???? Simple….the hospital did not want him to die in their facility. It would impact their statistics to have him die there. We feel completely duped. Not that the outcome would have been different, but we feel as though (under the guise of caring) they convinced us that palliative care vis a vis Hospice was what was needed, so they could get rid of him. For him to die within 2 hours of discharge is shameful on the part of the hospital. Two hours was all about statistics and nothing about compassion or humane treatment. I am appalled and outraged. They won’t pull the wool over my eyes again, but I am sure there is a family out there today confronted with the same situation as we were agonizing over the decisions that have to be made. It is only going to get worse with a public health care option. It scares me to think about it. If you don’t have a health care advocate, you need one or two or three. We spent 12 days bedside around the clock and we still got the boot. God only knows what would have happened had we not been there to be his advocate. NO, that is not true. He would have conveniently died days earlier and they would have had that statistic with which to deal.
