As you all know if you read my posts, I have had terrible guilt about my father's hospice last summer....opting against sending my dad back to a rehab for 8 weeks of antibiotics with picc line, urinary catheter, feeding tube (I never had them, insert it), bedsore, delirium and mrsa/endocarditis/sepsis...….this hospice organization that represents patients responded to my inquiry about my dads hospice meds. I do feel guilty about not continuing treatments but obviously thought hospice wouldn't kill him....whether this guy is correct is anyones guess but my gut was that he was stealth euthanized...
Your father was clearly very sick and would have died naturally long before he died in this case if he had not been treated. That being said, you are correct that the amounts of medications were quite unnecessary.
Morphine 1 mg/hour (at the end) is 24 mg per day, yet he didn't need that for pain and this would certainly help keep him comatose and work to slow and stop the breathing.
Ativan (lorazepam) has a half life of about 12 hours, so 0.5 mg every 4 hours actually means giving 1.5 mg Ativan (and its metabolites stay in the system even longer). 0.5 mg given every 12 hours is common for elderly women who have anxiety all the time, but 1 mg will snow you or me for a day probably if you haven't been taking it regularly. 1.5 is not normal at all, even in hospice. 1 mg is given for those with true anxiety or when they have severe pain that can't be handled just with pain meds (and other meds are also given to help deal with those types of pain).
and the Haldol: hard to say since he was on it before and as you say, it helped him. But with the other meds it probably may not have been needed since he was made unconscious by the morphine and ativan.
Was it euthanasia? It was stealth euthanasia. Not declared euthanasia, hidden, deceptive treatment disguised as "care." There is a big push to have patients die sooner rather than later and they put such patients into hospice or palliative care settings for that purpose (but never tell the patients or families that is what they are doing).
It is not possible to know what would have happened had your father received different treatment. He may have died anyway shortly thereafter and had many problems but what he got was not what authentic hospice would provide (and most hospices today do not provide authentic hospice care that does not hasten death!). You may wish to read the Stealth Euthanasia book (online to read for free) to understand the industry.
But YOU are not responsible! They did this. And you were only trying to do what was right for your father and I'm sure he knew that. God knows it!
Put the responsibility where it belongs: they knew what they did and were doing for sure! Not you!
that said, after our experience with my MIL On hospice, I can understand why people often think it is euthanasia. Now hospice most definitely did NOT euthanize my MIL. 5 days before she died, when she was really struggling to breathe, when the slightest movement caused her to lose her breath, the nurse strongly turning down the oxygen (which was at 18 and not really benefiting her) and starting morphine. My MILs partner was anti-hospice and thought the meds would kill her so she refused to give her Ativan and morphine and he had her afraid to take it. Anyway the nurse wasn’t able to properly explain why she wanted to turn the oxygen down so it was left at 18 but MIL did start taking morphine the following day, 3 times a day. She died peacefully 4 days later. The morphine had nothing to do with it. In her final hours, she had cheyne stokes breathing. The way the oxygen & morphine was explained to me on that fateful Sunday, I thought we were being asked to pull the plug. But that wasn’t the case, I know that now.
Hhospice doesn't kill people, they are there to make the end of people's lives as pain free and pleasant as possible. I don't buy into the whole "Hospice kills" mentality, as we had very good experiences with 2 of our parents, who both died of terminal cancer, on of which was in our home. IMO, they definitely are not "in it" for the money, or they would wish to keep their patients alive as long as possible. It just doesn't ad up to me.
Dr turned his back to us, DH and SIL are talking and I see Dr. inject a huge amount of morphine into dad's IV line. Told us he'd be in the hospital for a while, and thought it wouldn't be long.
Less than 10 minutes, and he's gone. Peacefully.
Was that stealth euthanasia? Or was it compassion by a dr who loses ALL his patients to the cancers they have.
They could have kept dad alive (and miserable) for a few more days, draining the fluid off his belly and out of his lungs. Forced feedings, ventilator...and to what end? It was his time.
Honestly, I read about this 'conspiracy' thing about Hospice and I just do not get it. How in the world is this something that makes people money, if that's what you're thinking??? Keeping them alive at all costs, now that makes the money.
People are simply afraid of death--at some level, we all are. When we lose a loved one, sometimes we want to lay the blame at someone's door. In truth, it often is simply that their bodies are worn out, and that one more dose of morphine is all it takes.
I don't know. I just know how grateful I was to this kind dr.