The Hospice Fiasco

Not one time did hospice care ever cross my mind when I thought about Bob. When he developed a blood disorder the hematologist told me people like Bob usually died from an infection that moved quickly or they bled out, but either way would be quick.

Bob and I were badly shaken when he went into acute delirium. In our wildest imagination delirium was never on the list of things that could happen. None of the specialists wanted to own that delirium, and believe me we didn't want to own it.

I needed to get Bob in to see a doctor and Friday is never a good day for that. As expected, none of his doctors were in their offices. I agreed to see a new doctor in one of the clinics where he was a patient.

This doctor actually did what doctors are supposed to do, he read Bob's medical records before seeing him. That was our undoing. The test results on Bob's recent bone marrow test were beginning to come in. This doctor entered the treatment room and immediately told us we needed to put Bob under hospice care. We were shocked, worse than shocked. Thinking back I can think of things I should have said or done but in that moment my brain was frozen.

That evening an intake nurse and social worker from one of the hospices came to visit. All went well until I had enough sense to know this needed to be run by our nurse daughter in Texas. I called Texas and had the intake nurse visit with Susan. After that things went bad in a hurry.

None of us slept that night. The next morning I called the hospice office and told them to hit the pause button, we were not ready to sign on.

Susan hopped a plane and flew to Oregon. One, among several, of her objections to the group we were working with was it being a for-profit group with offices nationwide. When I called their office a person in another state answered the call.

A local non-profit was what Susan wanted. That's what we did, and Bob's hematologist said he would be pleased to be the physician for Bob. We were all much relieved.

This was Thursday, Saturday morning Bob died.