Ethical question: Is it time for hospice?

OP this was posted in another thread from @Fawnby about her own mother dying from dementia (see in quotes below).

Count yourself lucky mom has kidney and liver failure and will not have to die from dementia. Please don't prolong her life with dialysis 3 times a week. This doctor is cruel and inhumane and I don't think he has any clue about what dementia does to a person.

"Life is devalued when it becomes horrific due to illness. I wish you could have seen my mother, always a beautiful, well-groomed woman with a fine wit and great intelligence. She lived to age 95. At the end, dementia rendered her an emaciated, grimacing skeleton with faded skin that drooped from her withered bones. Her teeth were dark brown. Her hair was almost gone. She couldn't hold up her head, get out of bed without a two-person assist, or talk. She made varied sounds, the meaning of which we couldn't understand. She was double incontinent. She had pain and couldn't articulate where. We don't know how well she could hear or see. She couldn't eat or drink without help, and that was only soft or liquid foods. Some of the last words she ever uttered were begging to die. This went on for more than 2.5 years. It is the way dementia patients end up if something else doesn't cause their death first."

Thanks everyone for your input. I don’t think the doctor is being greedy, just making a suggestion. But Mom has had a long, good life and I do think Hospice is the best decision. Not an easy decision for me but kinder in the end…

Any doctor that would recommend 3-times a week dialysis to a 91-year old with as many medical issues as your mother has should have their medical license revoked.

Oh my gosh. I would NOT take my loved one to kidney dialysis if they were in the same condition as your Mom. I think it's terrible that today soooo many doctors suggest treatment for elderly patients who are non functioning and have several medical conditions. It's RIDICULOUS. Keep in mind, they will continue to make a lot of money by doing this. It's so sad so see that GREED is at the forefront of what decisions are made. That's pretty much with everything today. I handled my Mom's health care as she got older and we had a DNR in place for her and I have one in place for me. You can walk the halls of nursing homes and see patients lying in bed suffering, just existing. It's soooo terrible. I wouldn't put my pet through the suffering that many elderly patients are having to endure. I suggest you call hospice. I always try to think to myself, would I want to be living like this? Whether I question that for a human or an animal.

We really are living too long in many cases.

I don't know enough about dialysis to answer this but I do know that at 91, nobody has that long left.

My Mum passed away at 71 from lung disease last year. Her other problem was increasingly limited mobiiity. When she got severely ill at the end, she didn't want to be resuscitated. I often wonder exactly why, but it obviously boils down to her concern about quality of life. She would have needed a lot of oxygen, amongst other medication & daily life would have been a struggle.

Everybody grandstands in their youth about how they'd rather be dead if,x, y, or Z happens but in your mother's case, I do think I'd rather nature take its course.

My dad had stage4 ckd. He didn’t want to go to dialysis even before his dementia diagnosis and definitely wouldn’t have afterward. The dialysis at best will just delay things for your mom while incurable progressive disease takes her brain plus liver, heart and lungs away.

My mother developed dementia at 87. She went into Memory Care Assisted Living from regular AL at 92. I prayed daily for God to take her, that's how miserable she was. She died at 95.

It's utter cruelty to take any life extending measures for an elder suffering from dementia and wait to watch them die from natural causes if saying no to dialysis will speed up the process. There's no ethical question here, imo.

Best of luck.

Hospice.

Unless you literally want to torture her to death.

Don't do it! She's lived a full life and deserves to pass in peace. Instead, contact hospice and see if mom qualifies. Make her comfortable and let her go.

I'm very sorry you're in this situation.

Hospice. Let her remaining time be as painless as possible.