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I've posted here multiple times, need answers but no one can give them to me. My dad had a major heart attack Sept 14th. He was hospitalized til Sept 18th when a poor prognosis made him decide to stop treatments and go into hospice care. The team warned us he could pass quickly since he also had sepsis and pneumonia.


My dad WANTS to go more than anything, he feels his quality of life is gone, can't walk, on a ton of meds, has to have a urinary catheter, kidney failure and congestive heart failure.


He has been in hospice for 2 months now, no meds, no treatments, just comfort care. He had confusion and hallucinations for several weeks. He did not eat anything but ice chips for 7 weeks.


Yesterday he was having severe abdominal pain so he decided to try to eat and has been moved to a pureed diet. He is coherent, and alert, more so than previous weeks. He says he wants to get this over with but his body isn't going.


I even looked into "the right to die" since we are in California, but it is quite complicated understandably. I feel guilty because he wants to go and though he improved a bit in hospice, we don't know what his kidney function or heart looks like with no recent diagnostics.


I'm actually worried if he gets discharged off of hospice he will try to do it himself if you know what I mean. I feel horrible worrying my dad won't die because it's what he wants more than anything.

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MamieM, there are times when a person is in the dying process that they have what is called a "rally" where it appears they are getting better, eating, talking, etc. Usually these rallies last a day or a week, then the person goes back to the dying process.

Your Dad may not be happy with this rally but for you take advantage of it, like ask any questions about the family tree or take in photos where you can't identify the people to see if Dad an identify them. This will take his mind off of the process for a bit of time.

I am not a medical professional but have seen this with my parents and have heard about it from others on the forum.
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