Mom said she is giving up. Are these signs of end of life?

Is she also refusing palliative care for the pain? If her pain is addressed she may have a different outlook...?

Who is turning down hospice care, you or her? If you are her POA then I would certainly get hospice involved, as they can at least try and relieve some of her pain. You certainly don't want your mom to suffer so, when there are solutions out there, if her life is in fact coming to an end. Please rethink getting hospice involved. God bless you.

She is presently under hospice care but turned down the caregiver today and said no more hospice. She is getting meds for pain. Has the option of morphine but she is paranoid now. Says she doesn’t trust them and they are out to get her. No dementia up until how she is acting now.

I’ve witnessed life becoming not worth the struggle to go on, it’s real. The signs for imminent end of life are no longer eating, no longer communicating, and sleeping most of the time in a deeper than usual sleep. Your mother isn’t there but her feelings that she’s had enough are real. Hospice can be a great resource for this. I would have them continue to come, talk with the nurses about not labeling it hospice if that’s upsetting to her. Sounds like time to change or increase meds to help with agitation.

She wants to 'go' but is actively fighting the very system that will make her wishes more comfortable and smooth.

It does sound like her thinking is a bit addled. If she says she's giving up, then support her in it, and explain (or have the hospice care people) explain in detail what they provide. Care and pain relief. They're NOT out to 'get her' and you know that.

I agree with Daughter. Don't call it Hospice if you can do so. I personally think Hospice is a true Godsend. My own mom somehow survived living in a houseful of COVID patients--YB's entire family had it and she didn't get it. She said she would have been FINE with getting it, but she is one tough old bird. She's 90+ and will probably live to 100.

Mom talks a lot about being 'ready to go' but she takes her meds and watches her diabetes, so although she is far from healthy, she is also far from dying.

I agree with midkid. She is actively fighting the system that will help her to be able to make her final exit. Does she understand Hospice, what it means, what medications they can provide, and how it will ease her through should she decide she wishes not to take nutrition, and to be medicated for comfort even if it should hasten her death by some hours, even days? I would encourage her to interview hospice. I think until we deal with the chronic pain of compression of the spine we cannot really understand that life can be only torture, pure and simple.