Options for patients released from Hospice care?

I'm sorry that your experiencing such a confusing situation. In order to stay on hospice, your mother must be considered terminal.

Hospice is there for comfort care, not rehabilitation. They do give heavy doses of pain medication as part of keeping the person comfortable. Considering that the person is supposedly dying, addiction isn't the issue - comfort is.

That being said, many people do improve once they are in hospice. Sometimes it's because they have been taken off of a long list of medications that had horrible side effects. Other times, it's simply the course of their disease and no one knows why they improve. However, once they are no longer considered terminal, insurance will no longer pay, so hospice has no choice but to release them from the program.

Since your mother has two months left in hospice, I'd start looking at nursing home or other care just in case she makes it. However, she may be in a temporary upswing with her condition and that may pass. No one can really tell - even the doctors. Just start preparing for her care outside of hospice knowing that it's entirely possible that she won't keep improving.

Most people who leave hospice are back on again shortly - after all, they were accepted into the program because they were diagnosed as terminal.

Please keep us updated. This is horrible to go through alone.
Carol

What does the family think is best? Care for her at brothers house? He burnt out? Place her in skilled nursing care?

It's not unusual for elders to get better under hospice care and be taken off hospice. She may well qualify for hospice again in the future. Hospice organizations are used to this. But they can't continue to provide care if death is not imminent.

Assuming there's funds for her care she can go to a nursing home or skilled nursing facility. My guess is that if she was admitted to hospice she should be in a skilled nursing care facility.

Hire home care or skilled nursing facility. My mom can't walk or get out of bed either unless we transfer her. She is dependent with all transfers but can sit in a wheelchair. She doesn't qualify for hospice so she is at home with me and three other women who all take turns caring for her. It runs about $1100 per month to pay the three girls to help me.

Reverseroles, I hired independent aides for two of the girls. I asked around to get names and the met them first. The one charges $10/hr. She come weekday mornings for one hour to get mom up and ready. The other charges $13/hr and comes weekdays for one hour at night to put in bed. The third girl is through an agency and runs $17.50/hr. She come two hours in the afternoon weekdays. I help mom in the inbetween times weekdays and the weekends. I also do her dinner and laundry. She has limited funds so this is working for us right now. Hope that helps!!

Kannie, Somewhere along the line last year, my Mom was diagnosed with Alzheimers, though she recognizes us still. She is diabetic. She was diagnosed with inoperable abdominal cancer 13 years ago and the tumor is still there. She has hardly been eating the last few weeks. She has been on hospice for too a few months.
I have heard of people being on hospice for 3 years in some cases. I hope you get the help you need soon. That is how I take things...one day at a time.

Being released from hospice only means that she is doing better than expected from the "six months to live" criteria doctors usually have for dying patients, and/or she is not expected to live very much longer. All the pain meds won't change a terminal diagnosis and all of you children need to expect the certainty of her death. I am sorry for your loss.

I'm going to jump in here and say I think it's the difference between certain hospices. My Dad in not terminal and hospice jumped in and "found" a dx for him. It is to my understanding as I've heard so many times that you really don't have to be terminal. He cannot walk or get out of bed either. They gave him a dx of dementia which he really does not have. He is 98.

Then it happened he formed a clot in his lungs and has a fib (just developed) and they changed his dx to heart condition. The nurse had mentioned that they re-evaluate and that's why they changed his dx. At the beginning though the doctor that signed the papers knew he was not terminal. However, I wouldn't be surprised if this did not happen to me either. I'm just saying what they did in the beginning for us. I hope you find a solution. I know how extremely hard this is and that is putting it lightly.

Ferris, as you know, "I'm sorry for your loss" is something you say after a person has died. HOW DARE YOU say that to this poster, in the midst of a nightmare, with a living parent!!! For you to make a casual pronouncement of impending death, and tell the poster that pain medication does not change a terminal diagnosis, as if she does not know that, disgusts me.

Katie222, Keep doing what you are doing as long as you can. My mom was in the same condition: sound mind but bedridden due to a fall and broken hip. I am an only child with no relatives or friends to help out. I felt I could not care for her at home since I am not well myself. The doctor put my mom in an unskilled facility, turned her care over to Hospice, and abandoned her.

What you should know is that Hospice provides no rehabilitative of curative care. They are there just to provide comfort care and pain relief primarily through the use of narcotics.

I stayed with my mom every day. She died after a month. I was extremely close to her and feel guilty for not having been able to do more for her that may have extended her life or at least provided her with the comfort of spending her final days at home which is what both she and I wanted.

I meant to say..........She can be care for at home or in a skilled nursing care facility............sorry