My Mother is being murdered by hospice!!!

You say you had not seen your mother in 6 weeks, well a lot can happen in that time with the elderly.
I don't think you are getting enough information. I think you are jumping to doom conclusions like most people on this board tend to like to do.
Reading all the posts of people that think their family was killed makes me happy that I am not from your family. I see this all the time in the hospital, People who have no clue about medicine are trying to "help" but end up making people suffer..very sad. I have met a few not so competent doctors and nurses but I have honestly NEVER met one that is out to kill people! Your brother is an EMT so I am sure he knows what he is doing better than someone with no medical background who has not been around for 6 weeks or longer. Just because someone is up and walking does not mean they don't have some problems lurking under the surface...Any way I am sure I am wasting my time typing on this site as people will believe what they want. Frankly, I am offended that people assume this from health care personnel, who tend to be the first ones to step up to the plate and help others...It really is a difficult job and requires a lot of sacrifice that you all are not aware of.
I hope that you are just in the grieving process and after wards you will have all the information and be able to process it correctly. I hope it all works out for you and your family.

No it is not my first time posting..I moved. I was hoping my experience would help in this situation but Doom prevails...

Nope.

You're making a lot of false assumptions.

I have been in contact with both my youngest brother and my older brother who is visiting there now. I was informed that just a few days ago, my mother was lucid and mentally alert.

As a nurse you ought to know better than to think that someone who can get up and walk with a walker is somehow in need sublingual MORPHINE every TWO HOURS! I can understand a Lortab if her hip is bothering her.

But morphine every two hours is just ridiculous. It was all spurred by the hospice decision and the decision to treat her palliatively, which is pure bullshit.

You did have to pull out the old canard that I'm merely reacting due to grieving. That's the ace card for the fucking killers. Look I don't care if my mother were to die of a heart attack tonight if that were the natural course of events.

My belief on a spiritual level that we are to live our life to the end because there are spiritual teachings available to us all the way up to the last moment. I also believe that intentionally pushing someone towards death is murder.

No one including "death panel" committee members have the moral right to hasten someone's death.

They have taken a sentient depressed woman and quickly turned her into someone who will be dead very soon, and killed due to their intentions to make her death "comfortable."

Your a "Red Neck".. right? Its ok.. you can admit the truth.

Fact is, people die. Period.

So you want to prolong their life so that they may live to suffer another day?

Please OP take her home and provide the care yourself, prolong her life as long as possible and alow her to die a painful death.

Well, I hope it all works out for you..

Hospice practices euthanasia, which is illegal in most states. They used morphine and scopolamine on my Dad. Those were the only two drugs he was on. The scopolamine puts the patient in a trance like state in which they can't take food or water, so they dehydrate very quickly. Hospice killed my Dad in one week with this protocol. He actually had undiagnosed Guillain Barre syndrome from the flu shot that year (2003), but Hospice decided that it was time for him, at 89, to die. He was sharp as a tack and aside from a few minor aches and pains, was pretty healthy.

Put scopolamine and morphine into a search engine and you come up with Joseph Mengele, the Nazi "Angel of Death."

Where did you go to charm school?

I work hospice. Let me explain this to you.

First off, hospice means that a person has a terminal illness and does NOT want life sustaining measures. When your mother fell, she should have been treated for pain-hospice is about comfort measures ONLY.

Palliative care is NOT HOSPICE. Palliative care is when you give antibiotics, you treat issues, you treat symptoms, and you give food and fluids.


When a person is actively dying, and this is something NO family comprehends and SHOULD HAVE been discussed with you-they no longer want to eat or drink. IT IS CRULE TO GIVE A DYING PERSON FLUIDS AND FOOD. I know. It seems counter intuitive and of course we have believed our whole lives that nutrition equals wellness. NOT WHEN YOU ARE DYING.

The processes of digestion, the cellular flooding of fluids, causes PAIN AND DISCOMFORT to DYING PEOPLE.

Hence, it is anything BUT cruel to do this.

Morphine is for pain control. It is NOT CRUEL.

We are NOT trying to kill people faster, we have NO interest in killing people. Are you kidding me? Its far more profitable to keep someone around and sick, and pump them with drugs and tests, and treating them for shit than it is to help them transist ON THEIR OWN, in COMFORT and in the LEAST AMOUNT OF PAIN.

I hold the hands of dying people every day. Dying people-they have lucid moments, where they fool their families into believing that they are "recovering" or not in need of hospice. Nature, is truly not as cruel as you think. They drift in and out of lucidity, they often hallucinate and see people they loved who passed on, they sleep alot-just like a newborn, they don't want to eat. They have fears, they have regret, they have excitment for moving on.

Someone should have sat down with you and counseled you on what to expect when a person is in hospice, and what dying is actually all about. Natural dying. Hospice is ONLY given to patients who have a prognosis of 6 months or less of life. Many strange things happen to a patient in the course of dying. I can assure you that not all of the medical community is monsters, out for money, don't give a shit about people and just want people to die and suffer. My God, and people wonder why I want out of fucking health care after 12 years. I have given my heart and soul, both to my patients and their families. Like I said, I have listened to people in their last moments of life, heard their last words, heard them utter their last bit of breath. I do this, because I would want someone to do that for me, in the most vulnerable period of anyone's life, the most unsure, unsettling. People react differently, many are scared, many are at peace. Many find God.

And mostly-patients wait until their families leave the rooms to die. Most want that moment to come alone, because they do not wish to make their loved ones suffer. Many family members feel extreme guilt if when they go to get a cup of coffee-their loved one passes. Its not like it is in the movies where everyone gets to be there for the final moment-it is a loving act of the dying person to spare those of that, tho many people WANT to be there for it. Dying is as individual as the people in their lives.

I understand your sorrow, your fears, your confusion. It is not at all easy to see someone you love so much dying. It sucks, its sad, its emotionally wrenching, draining. Lots of mixed emotions and its INTENSE. But please understand that hospice workers are NOT mercy killers-we DO NOT have that right, or the means to do it. ALL ORDERS for ANY DRUGS come DIRECTLY FROM THE MD> we simply DONT HAVE access to any drugs without our fingerprint and other ID'ing info giving us away, its almost impossible these days to steal it. I dont mean to be rude but no one is going to risk their liveylhood, their licenses and their families well being and possible jail, to get rid of your mom sooner. We don't have to-we will never be out of business. No need to rush anyone-there's plenty behind.

I hope this will help you to feel a bit better, and I think the MD and the hospice intake person did a LOUSY job at differentiating the difference between hospice and palliative care. You didn't mention why your mom is in hospice, that might help me understand more.

With respect......a hospice worker

Oh yeah, that's the only alternative - in your mind. I'm arguing against premeditated murder and your response is, if you don't want them to intentionally kill your mother than it's your job to provide for her care - otherwise murder is
A-okay.

Yeah, that's exactly how childish your thought process is.

My father is a retired orthopedic surgeon. I cannot remember it being appropriate to give morphine for hip pain before or after surgery. Period.

Check into that.

If morphine is not normally prescribed in a hospital setting to 65-year-olds with orthopedic pain (bone or joint related pain), you have a GOOD reason to doubt the true motivations of your brother and the hospice care workers.

It seems as though the hospice care workers have asked your brother the all important in question, "Who is in charge here (i.e. your mother or him)?" and he has answered that he is the one in charge.

Then, the hospice workers would have asked a series of questions with which they ascertain if his desire is to have your mother get better or slide into an earlier death by what they will describe as compassionate means (i.e. higher and higher doses of morphine every few days).

Your brother has undoubtedly asked for plan B (morphine prompted lack of respiration in the end) and the hospice workers are weakening your mother to prevent her from fighting for her own life by guaranteeing a continually dimishing physical condition (less muscle tissue to fight back with and less clarity of thought with each passing day).

Dpes your mother have a will?

Did she ever designate you or your brother or anyone else in charge of her medical decisions and/or financial affairs in a legal dicument in the past?

If so, and she designated him to look out for her best interests she has made a mistake. If she designated you, kick him out of all of her affairs TODAY and change the locks.

If she never designated either of you nor anyone else, you should be able to get some sort of a restraining order that would STOP the palliative care medical approach until you can have her guardianship decided between you and your brother (or the state) by a judge in family court.

If you do nothing, your mother will be helped to die with the morphine.

This is done routinely in every hospice center in America to my knowledge and I have three cases that I have known of personally that the deaths happened in this way (morphine overdose).

It is done in this country as a rule, but it is never discussed or admitted to openly to the nonmedical public.

Oh and to answer one of your questions more clearly; Morphine does not cause a person's organs to shut down. Actively dying does. It is correct that fluids as I stated, flood and hydrate the cellular walls and create edema. With someone with COPD, it would create a fluid build up in the lungs and your mother could aspyhxiate. Please know that her organs began to shut down FIRST, the morphine did NOT cause this. Morphine DOES depress the respiratory system however it does NOT decrease o2. (Oxygen). To give her oxygen would also cause a great deal of pain-like the bends.

My concern in your post is that you stated she did NOT have a prognosis of 6 months or less. She should have been palliative then WAY BEFORE HOSPICE.

THAT is what you should look into and consult an atty on.

Because I do not have first hand knowledge of the situation, anything I say should not be taken as absolutely applying to your mother's situation. And may I first say that I am so very sorry that you, your mom is going through this.


I have worked as a hospice nurse and I have also lost my mother to cancer. In under a month from diagnosis and yes we had to have her on morphine as the pain was tremendous. And yes, morphine will "help" them slip away from consciousness.


It is a very hard call because I am not there to say if there is a fine line being crossed or not. Only you would know that.

Sometimes though in the midst of the madness when you are losing someone dear to you, it is hard to accept that this is the case. The question you have to ask is "is the loved one in so much pain that there is no other option?". Basically if they are not on the morphine are they going to die a slow painful death? Because morphine or not, the organs will shut down. Its a question of whether it will be slowly and painfully or not. Would it be more compassionate to make them as oblivious as possible to the pain which as result causes a faster shutdown of the organs?
These are hard questions, I know.


Please do not think I am in favor of assisted suicide. But as it were, in my mothers case, she was in so much pain, starving to death and could not eliminate anyways because the cancer was blocking her bowel's and ureter. She was delirious from it all, barely there cognitively but enough to feel the immeasurable pain. There did come a point that my sister and I felt it was in her best interest to up the morphine and after that we had no cognitive communication with her. It was the worst moment of my life aside from learning she had stage 4, inoperable cancer. But in the end, I know we made the right choice FOR HER.

I will pray for you and your mom that you are guided to make the right choices. And may she not suffer, but go in peace.


Tons of hugs to you

I believe that you are sincere, and that you have never met people in health care that are "out to kill people." Unfortunately, though, they do exist; although I'm sure they don't see it as "killing."

I myself have quite a few years of experience off and on over the years in health care & related jobs. Nurse's aide, home health care worker, mental health care worker, and currently work with developmentally disabled individuals in a position in which I am required to pass meds.

And, I will tell you that hospice workers absolutely hastened my father's death. Without question. He didn't have a lot of time left, but they definitely shortened the time he had. He specifically didn't want morphine, but was given it anyway.

And lest you think I don't know what death does or should look like, I brought my grandmother home to my house from the hospital to die. I also helped a friend take care of her mother at home while she died.

Hospice can be wonderful, and it can also be callous. Even sinister. Perhaps you have not seen the other side.

Yes, agreed. O2 makes it worse

Morphine is for PAIN CONTROL, and when a person is dying, it is the best drug to give for a number of reasons, ask your surgeon family member. We are not talking about people who have a chance of full recovery and quality of life, we are talking HOSPICE. PLEASE UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PALLIATIVE AND HOSPICE HEALTH CARE BEFORE YOU POST.

SO much disinfo here, and it breaks my heart. I became a nurse for this?? So people could hate me for wanting to help people be well? When I first started 20 years ago, health care was NOT the corporate monster it is now, it was not "litigative" health care, it was not the hard on for insurance companies. You have NO IDEA how freakin' hard it is to BE in this field now, when your only intention was to HEAL and be there for people who are HURTING.

Im over it now. Been thinking a long time about getting out of it, for many of the reasons people here on GLP believe our health system sucks. But I'm tired of people like in this thread thinking I could be some kind of MURDERER.

REALLY SUCKS. But I'd go to Japan in a MINUTE if they would let me. THAT"S the soul of a REAL doctor or nurse....and all the other techs, too. Some of us-actually gave a shit.

Threads like this-why I just don't want to anymore.

OP first of all i want to tell you how terribly sorry i am to hear about this. When it comes to parents being abused it really gets to me.
I did some looking and found this for you... please check into it and quick!----->



# Mark A. Morrow, Attorney at Law
Nursing Home Justice Center
[link to www.nursinghomejusticecenter.com]
10001 Park Run Drive
Las Vegas, Nevada 89145
Practicing in the areas of: elder abuse in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, group homes and hospices. Also handle wrongful death and medical malpractice.
Representing clients in Nevada and Florida
Phone: (888) 965-ABUSE (2287) or 702-385-4357
E-mail: [email protected]

# Online Lawyer Source
Online Lawyer Source offers much information on medical malpractice legal matters such as medical industry perspectives on lawsuits and the guidelines victims need to follow in filing a lawsuit due to doctor negligence. You can find an attorney in your area through this site. Very much worth visiting. If you need legal assistance, this site can help you find the attorney you need.

[link to www.hospicepatients.org]

There's another side to ALL professions. There are corrupt, sick, sociopathic people in EVERY JOB IN THE WORLD. Why does health care get the headlines? Lots of reasons. But I am telling you-the percentage of those types is WAY LOWER THAN YOU THINK.

Sigh......MSM wins another one.

I've been through this recently. Family members who don't have the time to come by and help. No one around to wipe the crap off the loved one's ass. No one around to help fix their food. No one around to take them to doctor appointments. No one around to make sense out of or help pay the bills from multiple stays in the hospital.

What they do have time for is to make quick calls once in a while when it is convenient for them and tell you want they expect you to do without no clue as to what is going on.

Then when the end comes they come out of the woodwork to show how "compassionate" they are and what a monster you are.

.

I left the field about a yr ago because of the types of things you describe. I couldn't take it anymore. Part of me wants to go back but in my heart I know I cannot go along with the corporate boundaries we are made to abide by.

Last Edited by KBambi on 03/18/2011 02:31 AM

I can't even deal with this subject. Too personal. I wish you all the best. God Bless you and your family

OP,

you need to speak to a MEDICAL MALPRACTICE LAWYER.

GOOD LUCK.

DO NOT post your Phone number here OP...same for anyone else too...e-mail is ok but I do not want to see anyone posting theirs or anyone elses personal phone numbers...

NO fuck off, you are clueless, a broken hip can bring TIA after TIA and infection, when a person bones are like chalk the prognisis is bad, you clearly hove little idea how many people do not recover from such an inury and how quickly to makes a person go into decline.. if you think you know what her care SHOULD BE ////// fucking provide it.. you, know so well they are killing her, YOU make YOUR world different and provide her care, dont you understand the concept of self determination of autonomy?

I'm also a hospice nurse in a previous life smart arse, 6 years of hospice work in peoples own homes with their pain management provided by their family and only over seen by me (western wercy hospice is a wonderful Victorian service).. so I know whats out there, and I know what age and illness brings. I would never trust my loved ones to someone elses care because I know that should be the job of a loved one.

Man up and be the nurse, make yourself a fixture of her care facility or shut the fuck up about things you dont have a clue about.

You obviously need to tell yourself all those stories to create a world where what you do is okay.

I've clearly laid out the condition of my mother which you have chosen to ignore. She went from lucid and sharp minded AND WALKING to a drug induced coma from being administered MORPHINE every two hours!!

When she couldn't swallow DUE to the MORPHINE it was decided not to give her fluids. The morphine created this entire situation. Take her off the morphine and the problem resolves itself.

I can assure you that if you were given morphine every two hours you would have lost your ability to swallow food. I don't care if you would be the current Mr. Universe. You could be killed this way in two weeks.

As for your bullshit assumption regarding my state of mind or emotions about my mother's death, that is once again a story you need to tell yourself in order to assume a false position of calm authority over us knuckle dragging family members.

In your mind it is always the family member who goes for the hospice murder that is the enlightened one in your mind. The rest of us are unbalanced grievers in the minds of people like you.

I happen to understand that the desire to kill people by bringing them to a state of "comfortable death" is quite simply a "do gooder's" sickness. The worst despots are those who are do gooders because they believe they are actually doing good while they wreak havoc on their victims. It's nearly impossible to get them to stop their madness because they are so benighted in their evil ways.

I never said hospice is a money making scheme. That is just a false argument you've thrown out there to distract from what is really going on. There is a segment of our society that believes in the perverted euthanasia/death with dignity evil.

You are a part of it. There are degrees of this evil. Meanwhile you can take your committees and shove them where the sun don't shine. My mother was not in need of this atrocious death care.

I spoke with the manager of the hospice facility today, she is the one who told me that the "palliative option" is what was mutually agreed upon between my brother and the doctor who goes through a committee because that's how they avoid the 'Kevorkian' stigma. So you can shove that up your butt, too.

If I sound mad, premeditated murder does that to me. I hope you'll forgive my justified anger regarding that.

Here is another perspective on your lovely profession:

[link to www.hospicepatients.org]

900074, I can see from what you have written about your experiences with the dying that you are the real deal. Bless you. Unfortunately, my father had the opposite. It was more like a hospice franchise. They give people like you a bad name. If they get the headlines, it's because they cause so much pain in the families.

I'm with you KBambi. I just want to rant about it. What happened to respecting the people who try and save your lives, bring you back to health, find innovative ways to treat with less pain and invasiveness, who really do care, who will be there when your loved one passes because they wont?

Seriously. There are 2 sides to every story. All I see are people who demand a "quick fix"-give me a pill. I'm depressed, I have anxiety, I am overweight, I am underweight, blah blah. Give me drugs, then they are the same people who complain about the pharmeceutical companies and how we are all out to drug people up. PEOPLE.....DEMAND THIS. Quit smoking? Yeah dont bother to WORK at it, pop a pill. Lose weight? Sure, munch on processed chemical laden crap filled with nutrasweet that says "low fat 1/2 calories on it" and then complain that you have chronic health problems and aren't losing weight. Demand meds to suppress your appetite. Quit drinking? Take an antidepressant or antibuse. High blood pressure, cholestorol? GIVE ME DRUGS. Don't work your fat asses out, dont learn to cook your own healthy foods, just buy shit labeled "organic" and "fortified" and believe that box of mac and cheese with the processed powdered "cheese" in it could POSSIBLY be organic.

Stress out, microwave most your meals "but its a frozen meal that says "healthy cuisine on it, that's okay, right?" WRONG. Don't think outside the box, don't bother to understand your insurance so when you have an HMO instead of a PPO you can bitch and moan that you have to get a pre-approval, don't change your diet when your hurting, by all means only work out with a "fast, guranteed in 90 days to whip you into shape" buy work-out equipment and hang your clothes from it, join a gym and be "too tired from work to go"-and BLAME DOCTORS AND NURSES, who incidently, are held hostage by the insurance companies (or, LACK of them, since so many people have public aid or use the ER as a doctors office)-and then BITCH AND MOAN and THREATEN TO SUE. Then complain a little longer when you have to sign a ton of papers like a fucking mortgage just to get a blood test.

DONT BOTHER to ask questions, get second opinions, google information. Just jump to paranoid conclusions and look to BLAME the very people who are STILL IN FUCKING STUDENT LOAN DEBT because once upon a time, they had this stupid idea to HELP PEOPLE LIKE YOU. No, doctors are NOT rich anymore, because the malpractice insurance ALONE kills them. Not to mention a drain on the system by NON PAYING patients-those without insurance, and those with public aid who DONT FUCKING NEED OR DESERVE IT-while many of your nurses and techs go WITHOUT INSURANCE, because hospitals are only hiring PRN-as needed-positions which offer NO BENEFITS.

The irony-working in a hospital with NO HEALTH INSURANCE, treating those not even here LEGALLY, who got STATE insurance.

Yep, then demand CHANGE in the healthcare system. Bitch that your bill is too high, whine that "It costs 8.00 fucking dollars for an asprin at the hospital"-you know, because we are just greedy motherfuckers who rape you for all you are worth and then KILL you when you come in sick. We are sadistic evil bastards, it has nothing to do with staff shortages, budget cuts, and greedy corporate CEO's who use us like pawns. We are not victim too-JUST YOU.

FUck, I need off of this thread. I have no more compassion. I literally gave at the office. From ER, to hospice and all points in between, and I thank God that there were enough intelligent, PRO_ACTIVE and grateful people to see what we are trying to give that made it worth it to stick it out the 20 years I did.

And then they wonder why there's a nursing shortage.....

I agree.. people like OP is what drives nurses and Dr's and other people who know whats going on with their body to die all alone by their own hand (because to have the presence of loved ones would implicate them in the act of issisted suicide or worse.. murder).. Death at the end of the line is NOT murder.

For some "death is the only salvation" and Gods most ultimate loveing act.

[link to www.sify.com]

Aussie, hope you like my rant I just posted. And of course we will get slammed for "damn, wouldn't want you to be my fucking hospice nurse" because they want all nurses to be angelic looking, acting meek Florence Nightengale-you know, while they call us murders.

Too bad they don't know that the prognosis for people who break a hip is about 5 years. Most die 5 years afterwards no matter if they were ever in hospice or not. And what do you know-NOT on morphine, either.

The ignorance is staggering, but eh, that's why we went to bloody school. No pun intended LOL

Wow. How compassionate.