End of life, alone or at home

One third of all federal spending on health care is spent caring for elderly people in the final two years of life.

One reason, I believe, we spend so much is a societal denial of the inevitability of death.  When most people now die in hospitals, it's natural to think that death is a medical failure.

"When you're looking at end-of-life care, too often the care that is delivered is simply a shotgun approach: This person is really sick, so let's try this, this, this, and this," said Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, Massachusetts' health secretary. "People don't understand the limits of technology and providers don't, in a way that is understandable to people, discuss the risks and benefits of certain interventions.

"We are operating in an era where for the most part, the public thinks that consuming more healthcare is better for your health, and that's simply not true."

End-of-life care costlier in Boston

I do not think that government regulations can solve this problem unless there is a rationing of care for the elderly.  An elderly person should be able to get whatever medical treatment he needs or she wants.

As death approaches, it's usually the family that insists on whatever it takes to help grandma.  What grandma wants is the presence of loving family and friends.

Rocco Palmo loves his 93 year-old grandmother who is constantly surrounded by the presence and love of her daughters and other family members; but, when she was hospitalized last Christmas Eve with pneumonia, he saw what was happening in the other hospital rooms.

Walking to Gram's room, I couldn't help but look in the other doors along the way and notice so many patients all alone in their beds, almost writhing with a loneliness and heartbreak you could feel a full ten feet away and almost cut with a knife. In the eeriest of ways, the usually-frenetic hallways felt like a ghost-town, filling the place with a sense of despair, of sadness and pain that was, in a word, brutal, especially given all the lights and celebrations going on in the streets outside and streaming over the TVs.

Thinking about it later, I couldn't help but try to figure out what it was that they were looking for.... And, well, the answer was right there: it might've been 24 December, but in the purest sense of it, they were still waiting for Christmas -- not wrapped gifts, lavish rituals, beautiful music or decorations on trees, but simply the loving, comforting presence of God in a human touch.

Do family members realize that leaving grandpa in the hospital for "whatever it takes"  subjects him to tubes and drops and continuous pokes and prods for yet another test, depriving him of what he wants most, the assurance that only a loving human presence can give him?  Who wants to die in a hospital if it can be avoided in any way.

Death is a profound mystery.  People who have developed a solid Christian faith and who believe in the risen Christ can face death with serenity.  Those lacking faith still want loyal companions to accompany them to the gates of death.  I wish families would consider hospice soon for their elderly relatives who are terminally ill.

As I learned when my mother was dying and all my brothers and sisters came home to be with her, our time together in her last month was wonderful, full of love and laughter, stories and visitors.  Her death was beautiful , at home in her own bed, without tubes, with all the pain medication she needed, surrounded by the children and grandchildren who loved her.