Our late room mate recently went through with a hospice. He has passed about three weeks ago. I didn't know him as much as my other room mate but still find myself thinking about it and being reminded of it. About a year ago, he was at first, only ill with acid re-flux, per family practitioners diagnosis. The family practitioner sent him to some kind of stomach doctor (don't know proper name of it) and then a few other specialist along the way and what seemed to be eight to ten months later he got much worse. They then did a CAT scan on him and found out that he terminal cancer of the liver, stomach and lungs, along with enlargement of the heart and the heart starting to fail.
I think it was an oncologist that said he was too far along for any treatment and gave orders for hospice treatment. Anyway the oncologist told Roger he had only a few months left and he should get his things in order. The oncologist also had private conversation with Louie, Rogers much closer friend, and told him that Roger probably only had weeks to live. Well it was about only three weeks and Roger then did pass.
Anyway Rogers hospice, those people who maybe were supposed to help, were really not that much of help at the end. Really all they seemed to have done is supply some drugs (morphine and other nerve calming medications) and tell Louie to give them to him when the time got near. After few days of what seemed normal, Roger had a turn for the worse. He woke up coughing up blood one day, and Louie called the hospice. They sent a nurse, she messed around a little bit and then told Louie to start giving him the morphine and some other small sized nerve pill. Roger was hard breathing and not looking like he was doing too well.
Then the next day I got a little more anxious and thought to call my sister again on what was happening. She is a retired convalescent nurse, and figured she might know what was happening and what to do. The first time i called her a day earlier about the blood she warned me that he might go into some kind of death rattle with his breathing. She seemed to kind of know a lot about it to some degree (probably because have being there before) and also told us that those who worked for the hospice were probably somewhat desensitized to such things.
Roger fought to the end, never believed he was going be gone, and left thing accordingly. Louie or i didn't have a problem with him doing it this way and did what we could to help.
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