Hospice

As you may know, I have a heart for hospice. I love healthcare, but I love hospice, and if I spent the rest of my life with the dying, I'd probably be okay with that. 

But the thing about hospice is that it frequently gets used incorrectly. Or...less-than-optimally. Especially when I see it in traditional healthcare settings. 

The true definition of a person on hospice is a person with a terminal illness that will result in their death within the next six months. That's right - a full six months. And should God have different timing in mind, hospice can be extended for another six months and six more after that and six more after that...until the terminal illness takes its full course. 

That's because the true nature of hospice isn't to help you die comfortably; it's to help you squeeze the most life out of your final days as you can. Yes, hospice is not really for dying; it is for living. 

Still, too often, hospice is called in at the last hour, in the final few days, when there's nothing left to do but to make someone comfortable. When there's not much life left to squeeze out, if any at all. So folks have this impression of hospice as the team that comes in when there's nothing else that can be done. 

Imagine if you didn't wait that long. 

See, hospice comes in in the final days and family members are gathered and they say, "We just can't watch him be in pain any more" or "We don't want her to know what's going on," and they expect hospice to induce a kind of out-of-it-ness that will remove their loved one from the decaying body they're still trapped in. 

What if you wanted those things for your loved one before those final, hard-to-watch, painful hours? 

That's what hospice is supposed to do. It's supposed to come in early and manage pain for the living, not the dying. It's supposed to come in early and fill the terminal space with so much life that you can almost forget what's going on. It's supposed to come in early and make the last season comfortable, not just the last hours. And there are so many ways to do that besides morphine drips and mouth swabs. 

At the same time, as I have been thinking about this, I have also been thinking about my own eventual fate. I mean, we are all dying. Every one of us. Myself included. 

I spend a lot of my time investing in my wellness, in my strength, in my healing. I'm always doing exercise, running, walking the dog, engaging in rehabilitation, working to make my life better. But sometimes, it occurs to me that in the end, all I'm really hoping for is to die strong. That's the end - that's what's going to happen. I'm going to die. The only question is whether or not I will die strong, whether or not I will die having squeezed as much life and strength and vitality out of my seasons as I can. 

Every time this thought comes into my head, it makes me stop and think about what I really want, what I'm really doing, and what's really possible. And whether this is the best time that I have or whether it might be better some other way. 

We think it's morbid to think about, but it doesn't have to be. It's just life. And, well, death. There's no getting out of it. So just as we're hesitant to call hospice in "too early," as though there is such a thing, and thus miss out on the full benefits of what it has to offer, we are often too hesitant to think of our own eventual demise and miss out on much of our own lives, as well. 

Just something I'm thinking about. Thought I'd share. 

*If you ever need to talk hospice, hit me up. It's seriously a passion of mine and probably always will be. It's the way God's wired me.