I’m Ready. Will You Help Me?

On Friday morning, Viki Kind, author of The Caregivers Path to Compassionate Decision Making, joined me on Your Caregiving Journey. You can listen to our show via the player at the bottom of the post. Our show focused on how to handle a really tough situation: Your caree, who is not cognitively impaired, makes a conscious decision to stop eating and drinking. In essence, your caree makes the decision to die. The...

Hospice vs Traditional Medicine

Reading Shandi’s posts I couldn’t help but notice this one particular line: “Hospice amazing, the medical support I’ve looked for all year” I’ve not experienced hospice directly but the overwhelming majority of accounts that I read and hear say the same thing.  It begs the question, Why? Is it that with hospice finally comes a much longed for focus more on the patient and family...

Resources for Life’s End

As we support The Unit Known as Shandi and her mom, I thought it would be helpful to share resources we have on the site. You can find articles relating to end-of-life care, including making the feeding tube decision, here: www.caregiving.com/tag/end-of-life/ And, one of the articles includes a talk show I did about 18 months ago with a chief medical officer at a Hospice organization based in Florida (Making the...

What Will You Always Keep?

Yesterday, on Your Caregiving Journey, Judith joined me talk about her love story with Nelson and the difficult news they heard last week. You can listen to our show via the player below. During our discussion, Judith shared how she stays healthy. She also said she knows that she may have to adjust some the of the activities as Nelson’s care needs increase. Her exception? Yoga. So, I’d love to know:...

Ask the Nurse: Should My Mom Get a Feeding Tube?

Yesterday afternoon, on Your Caregiving Journey, Jeannie Keenan of My Health Care Manager, joined us to answer your questions. (You can listen to our show via the player at the bottom of the post.) We had four questions, but spent our time tackling a tough one: I care for my mom, who has advanced dementia. She will periods, some times lasting a few days, where she won’t eat. The doctor has suggested a feeding...

Where Matters, Too, When We Die

I think we all hope that we die when we’ve completed our Bucket List, so to speak. That we end just as our work here ends. An article in USA Today yesterday also says that it matters where we die. According to the article, “cancer patients who died in a hospital or intensive care unit suffered more physical and emotional distress than those who died at home with hospice services, according to study of...

Help a Hospice Nurse: What Product Do You Use for Personal Care?

I received the following email this morning from a hospice nurse, who requested your help: I am trying to find out if there is a product out there to help caregivers pull a patient up in the bed, or turn them from side to side, or change a Depends when the patient can’t help and there is no one else to help. I am a hospice nurse who has many patients who need to do this and don’t have anyone to help...

When Dying to Live Makes Dying Horrible

The New Yorker has an incredible article on its website today: Letting Go by Atul Gawande. Gawande tackles the question: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life? The answer lies in a heartbreaking story Gawande tells of a young woman diagnosed with advanced lung cancer while 39 weeks pregnant. Her story illustrates the difficulty physicians have in communicating honestly about chances of survival and...

An Unchanging Message

It’s been a week now since my Mom’s primary care physician broke the news to Mom that she’s at the end of her 15 year fight; the last 8 of which have been full-court-press. Being the skeptic that I am, I escalated the issue to her specialist at the transplant institute. I was able to get the specialist and the primary care docs to talk – at the last minute, so a consistent message could be delivered to...

Decisions from the Head and Heart

This morning in Your Caregiving Journey, Viki Kind joined us to discuss her new book, “The Caregiver’s Path to Compassionate Decision Making.” You can listen to our discussion via the player at the bottom of this post. Viki and I spoke about the five core questions she suggests you ask yourself as you determine how and when to make a decision on behalf of a caree. The questions are: 1. Does the...

Harsh Realities

I’ve finally had a couple of full night’s sleep this weekend. Still tired, but not exhausted as I have been over the last month or so. We had someone from Hospice out Thursday to let us know what services are offered for my mom – it was a good conversation and intellectually everything made sense. A few hours later, however, my mother and I shared our first cry about her condition and the position in...

Unpleasant Conversations…Hospice and Palliative Care

I’m sure this has been discussed  on this site before, but it has happened again over in my neck of the woods. Today was interesting. For starters, I pulled a back muscle in the morning while doing a light workout–in an attempt to be “healthier” and to “take care of myself.” Sigh. Also, my Gram’s daytime caregiver was sick, but we were lucky enough to get our weekend gal...

Making the Most of End-of-Life

This morning, Dr. Daniel Maison, Vice President for Medical Services and Chief Medical Officer at Treasure Coast Hospice, Stuart, Fla., joined us for a discussion about end-of-life decisions on Your Caregiving Journey. (Dr. Maison is also Physician Section Leader for National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization‘s National Council of Hospice and Palliative Professionals and Clinical Assistant Professor at...

What If… Decisions Near Life’s End

(Editor’s Note: Over the past few days, we’ve been sharing articles to help you with difficult decisions. The Hospice Institute of the Florida Suncoast shared the following article, courtesy of Caregiving at Life’s End: The National Train the Trainer Program, to help you make end-of-life decisions.) Throughout the experience of caregiving you may be faced with making decisions with and for your care...

Ahhh…. ARGH! From Blueberry Waffles to a Physician’s Nonsense

I sat down to the breakfast table this morning with two waffles topped with butter, blueberries and syrup. The cranberry juice was straight-out-of-the-fridge cold. Ahhh… Life is good. I opened the front section of the Chicago Tribune, perusing page-by-page until I arrived to the Letters to the Editor section. Hmm… The debate over end-of-life discussions has hit the Opinion page. The catalyst was an...