My friend just got a call from the hospital saying his father is terminal and they are going to send him home. What? I do not understand. He was diagnosed with brain cancer awhile back. It has been up and down for awhile. He finally came out of a 2 week coma and has been comunicating and moving around. He is ready to start physical theorpy next week. Now this? Can someone explain what might be going on?
Many people with cancer take some pretty wild swings in health. As far as sending him home. Its because there is nothing more the hospital can do for him. Send him home, give him lots of painkillers, and let him spend his few remaining days with his family and friends. It seems kinda defeatist but its reality, many cases are beyond medicines ability to fix.
I.A.N.A.D., but… the doctors may feel that this is the appropriate time to send him home and have likely given him and his family local Hospice contact information.
My mother has been a Hospice nurse for roughly 17 years. She’s attended countless deaths, and most of them have taken place in the home, with loved ones present.
OTOH, if he is truly starting P.T. next week, the doctors may feel he’ll do MUCH better in his own home, exercising regularly with a Physical Therapist and prolonging that end drop off the plateau.
I’m sorry for your friend’s upset.
Cartooniverse
That happened with my friend’s sister Chelsea. She was diagnosed with lukemia when she was in 4th grade, and by 6th grade they said she was completely recovered. Less than a year later she took a horrible swing and the dr’s sent her home - saying she had about 2 months left. As others have said, the dr’s knew they could do nothing more for her, and they wanted her to be home with her parents and sisters (it was also stressful for my friend, as we were in 8th grade and she had 4 younger siblings to take care of when her parents were in the hospital with Chels).
Anyone from the Rochester area might actually recognize her - she was a spokesman for Camp Good Days and Strong Memorial Hospital. Anyway, her family basically told her the night she got home that they loved her and wanted her to feel free from the pain… she died that night.
IANAD but I think it is by choice. I doubt the hospital will kick the patient out.
A guy at work had cancer. He would go in to the hospital for medication. It reached a point where the doctors said they had done all they could and treatments (not pain killers) were ended. But they did not force him to stay in the hospital until he died.
It’s hard to take at first, but after the fact you realize that it is better for a loved one to die at home rather than at the hospital.
In my mother’s case (who died 9 years ago today), she hung for about 2 1/2 weeks after being sent home with terminal colon cancer. She couldn’t eat anything anymore as there was no place for it to go.
We just took her home, got a hosptial bed, learned to change IVs, kept her comfortable the best we could and we just waited it out. At least I felt I did something to ease her pain.