When is hospice euthanasia?

My father returned home after a couple weeks in the hospital with hospice care. The help they provided was wonderful and the emotional help was amazing. He gained his strength back and probably could have gone back to home health but he was very comfortable with the staff especially the woman who came to shower him three times a week. Two years later he was still on hospice care when he began his journey. Every situation is different but he was restless, agitated, and seemed uncomfortable. Hospice advised us to begin administering the morphine as we felt was necessary. He passed very peacefully the following day. Hospice offered us so much emotional help and an understanding of what to expect when a patient begins their journey. My advice would be to make sure all family members are on board and understand exactly what hospice does. One member got angry with me and told me I should just take him to the vet and have him injected. Hospice is a wonderful organization and they are there to guide you.

Hospice is ILLEGAL Euthanasia when the patient first off refuses Hospice and is UN-KNOWINGLY forced onto it anyway without ANY Consent. Second, the patient is denied treatment for illnesses found through lab work, but never told. Third, the patient is denied food and hydration and overdosed with morphine. Lastly, offered a morphine drip to hasten his death, which he is responsive enough to REFUSE along with his family. He's been denied ALL lifesaving treatment even though he adamantly states he wants treatment and does NOT want to die. Last but not least, ILLEGAL DNR takes place. I'm talking about my 66 year old husband, ILLEGALLY Medically Murdered. His name is William and he will NOT EVER be forgotten and the Murderers will NEVER here the end of me!!!

pissedoffwife, have you contacted the police?

freqflyer-Yes I have. I was told I can't file charges against them. That the State has to. Nobody seems to care about Medical Murder's. For some reason they are letting them get away with Murder. Probably Money.

pissedofffwife, please note the time table to passing is the same whether Hospice is used or not.

As for the reason why one isn't given food or water is because the stomach is no longer digesting, thus food/water would just sit in the stomach causing a lot of pain. This would happen with or without Hospice.

A person isn't placed on Hospice without a doctor ordering same. Who in the family signed the paperwork that is required by Hospice?

When it comes to morphine, a Hospice patient gets 5 to 15 mg, no different then the amount that a surgical patient would need for the pain. It would take 200 mg to cause death. Morphine is a highly regulated medicine, thus every mg is accounted for.

DNR is not given to a patient if the patient or whomever is representing the patient [Power of Attorney] had signed the paperwork. Someone had to have signed the DNR paperwork.

Most Hospice associations are non-profit. And many of the workers are volunteers.

I am sorry for your lost, it will be coming up to two years, correct? Could you tell us why your husband was in the hospital?

Frequentflyer-Evidently you're not in CORRUPT NH where Hospice is running rampant. No-one consented or signed anything for Hospice and No-one consented to oor signed ANYTHING for a DNR. It all boils down to NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE and Medicare fraud. You have no idea of how Hospice and the NH hospitals work in Murdering patients. In this Nashua hospital you have No say.
Illegal? You're damn right it is! Oh and by the way, do you consider 225 mgs of Morphine daily to be too much? I do. Thats an overdose!

Pissed off Wife:

I am sorry to hear about the negligent care of your father.

You are right SOME hospitals or hospice care facilities do hasten death for their own convenience. Just google it.

Perhaps people need to stay in denial to comfort themselves.

Can you talk to an attorney about filing a civil suit. A civil case is easier to win than a criminal case. Most attorneys give a free initial consult.

My grandfather was given weeks to live in a hospice. I took him to my home and he lived more than five relatively happy years.

Also just recently here are links to a high profile case about a doctor that was prescribing overdoses of fentanyl and killing patients without permission from family members.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/families-sue-doctor-accused-ordering-fatal-doses-pain-medications-dying-n959476

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20190115/second-lawsuit-filed-alleging-deadly-dosage-of-fentanyl-by-mount-carmel-doctor

I just Googled "hospice hasten death" and there are websites but none of those websites are medical websites, such as the National Institute of Health, or the Mayo Clinic. They are website created by individuals who were upset that their love one had passed.

When death occurs, one has a real need to blame someone, that is quite normal. Yes, the emotions are very real. I would hate to find out my family was spending so much time regarding my death not to pay attention to anything I had done in life.

When it comes to the Internet, one can find anti websites for everything and anyone. There are still websites that claim no one dies from smoking cigarettes, that smoking health issues are a hoax.

There are websites that claim the world is flat.

it is best to concentrate on websites from highly accredited medical facilities, who have done decades of research on any medical subject matter.

Oh, regarding the recent new report about a doctor who overdosed his patients. Does that mean every doctor does that? What percentage would that be? 100% or less than 1%. It would be the latter.

Heather10 He was my husband of almost 43 years.

In terms of your request on hospice i would suggest you check the medical guidelines of the 1997 passage by the supreme court for palliative sedation. This procedure is only to be used when the patients pain is not controlled by other means, they have 3-4 days to live, not more than 14 days to live, and have stopped eating and drinking. There are many articles both in medical journals and newspapers discussing hospice care and their usage of this palliative sedation and what the medical community thinks of this procedure. It is highly debatable as usage has an effect on death.

Morphine, like all opiates and opioids, causes tolerance to develop when it's taken regularly over a period of time. That's why it's not possible to say that a certain dose is too high or not for a particular patient unless other factors are known. 225 milligrams of morphine given as a daily dose may not be high at all for a patient who has been using the drug for many months or more. The patient would likely start off at about five to ten milligrams per dose, but as time goes on, the body becomes used to the drug. More and more is required to continue to provide adequate pain relief. Tolerance is a normal occurrence that happens to anyone who takes an opiate or opioid regularly. It's not the same as addiction; it's just the way the brain responds to the regular presence of an opioid drug. Oral morphine tablets are supplied at different dosage levels ranging from 5 milligrams on up to 200 milligrams per tablet. It's very possible for someone with a very high opioid tolerance to safely take 200 milligrams of morphine as a daily, or even a single, dose. This would be likely be in a time-released preparation intended to be administered twice a day.

On the other hand, someone who has never taken an opioid before, or has used them only rarely in the past, could never, ever safely take anything close to 225 milligrams of morphine in a single day. Everyone is different, of course, but as a general guide, a patient just starting morphine therapy for pain would probably receive about five to fifteen milligrams as an initial starting dose. Factors such as pain level, age, sex and size of the patient could affect the dose. Over time, with regular daily use, the patient will require periodic upward dosage adjustments in order to keep getting adequate pain relief.

Pissedoffwife, I hope you find peace somehow with the death of your husband. My experience so far with hospice care for my friend with heart failure has been a positive one. His pain is adequately controlled with moderate, although increasing, doses of oxycodone. Lorazepam eases his anxiety, and temazepam allows him adequate sleep at night. Tolerance will affect the dosages of all these medications eventually. This will also be true should he need morphine to help ease the dyspnea that is sure to come.

May all the caregivers here find the strength they need to care for their loved ones. It's sure not easy.

It is interesting that when people talk about a too high dose of morphine, they always talk in terms of pain tolerance.

Yes. It is true. One does develop a tolerance to morphine and the user needs more and more to quell the pain.

Still, the drug is doing irreparable damage to the kidneys and liver. It is toxic.

I took my grandfather out of a facility that was overdosing him on pain meds, weaned him off and he lived another happy five years. There are natural ways to relieve pain. If people research these methods, they may be surprised.

Also, when being weaned off of morphine or opiates, it causes a withdrawal syndrome that is very very very painful and anxiety inducing Thus weaning is like a catch 22. The pain levels seem to go up, due to withdrawal symptoms, But once the body adjusts again, the pain will subside.

Of course it is much easier to simply give a prescription pain med rather than seeking alternative methods, particularly when one witnesses the withdrawal symptoms.

Here is a link to an National Institute of health (NIH) abstract discussing the toxicity of pain meds.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5297852/

Here is another NIH link with a portion of the abstract included in parenthises. The word hepatic is a medical term for the liver. The word renal is a term of the kidney.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15886461

( "Our findings pointed out the risk of increased lipid peroxidation, hepatic and renal damage due to long term use of opioids, especially morphine. Although opioids are reported to be effective in pain management, their toxic effects should be kept in mind during chronic usage." )

With any human situation there are going to be good competent people involved, incompetent but well-meaning people on the scene, and just plain malevolent people too. To me it makes sense to choose comfort care only when your situation is not going to be significantly helped by further treatment. I don't see the point in "fighting to the last ditch" when sooner or later death is going to have the last word.
But I don't understand why hospitals, etc. would want to kill someone for money reasons.  After all they get paid for patients in the beds and not corpses.  Would make more sense to indulge in last ditch treatment on a money basis.  And is there a question here, pissed off wife, that no DNR or hospice papers were signed? Did you ask to see the papers they claimed they had?  Did a civil attorney petition on your behalf?

As for drugs, to control pain etc.; of course there are downsides but you have to look at balancing good effects vs. bad effects and find a balance. A dear friend had back/spinal issues as well as CHF. The painkillers were sure not "good" for her body in a general sense, but without them she would probably have killed herself.  So often, in this life, you are stuck choosing the "least bad".

rovana-They admitted they had NO consent forms for either. CMS questioned them also when they found out there were NO consent forms signed. They told CMS my husband wasn't enrolled in Hospice/Palliative care. Legally, he wasn't. Illegally, he was. I sent all documentation to CMS proving he WAS put on Hospice/Palliative care. They told me they were never billed for Hospice, so I sent them all the bill's they paid for the Hospice/Palliative care Doctor and Nurse Practitioner. That money was taken back and I'm still fighting the Medicare fraud practiced by the Hospital. Hospice is paid at a lower rate and the Hospital got away with billing for Original Medicare. If they had billed under Hospice without consent forms, then MAYBE they would have been in trouble.They were paid for FULL services/treatment and my husband was never treated for anything. All he got was overdosed with Morphine and if I didn't get his record's I wouldn't have known that or anything else, including SEPSIS that was left untreated. As for the DNR, CMS is doing NOTHING and the NH Medical Board claims it was a case of MISCOMMUNICATION. Does MISCOMMUNICATION give anyone the right to Murder someone?

OhSusannah-My husband started being given all that Morphine two day's after he was admitted to the Hospital. He stopped eating, walking, talking and drinking. All he did was sleep. The Palliative care Doctor stated it was to improve his quality of life, to help him. What quality of life is there when all a person does is sleep? He walked into that hospital and never walked again!

Thanks for getting back to me!  Sure is an eye-opener...Thanks for going after them and I hope you can get some resolution here (and maybe scare them into cleaning up their fraud).  Just cannot take anything on trust these days.