When the doctor gave her the bad news in her hospital room, he asked her if there was anything she wanted. Her immediate response was, "Dr. Kevorkian." At first, I thought it was her idea of a sick joke.
But it wouldn't be long before I knew she meant business. She was soon moved to a hospice care center, where the nursing staff managed to get her well enough to send her home, which turned out to be a cruel move. In a day's time, her condition worsened, and she ended up in a nursing home, where she ultimately died. Our family was told the whole dying process would take two or three weeks, and my mother wouldn't suffer. She would, the doctors said, be asleep most of the time.
The doctors were wrong on both counts. Although they did a fairly decent job of keeping her physical pain at bay, they couldn't do anything about her emotional pain. . . . Unlike dementia patients, my mother was totally lucid until the day before she passed away and knew exactly what was happening to her each step of the way. And during what seemed like every hour of every day, she would say to anyone who would listen, "Get me Dr. Kevorkian." Or, "Give me a poison pill." NWI Times
Editor: I don't know what kind of "hospice" program treats a woman as they did. The perspective of this article is skewed by a misunderstanding about hospice care.
No comments:
Post a Comment