There’s a lot to consider when you or your loved one make the decision to start hospice or palliative care. While there’s not enough space in a blog to get into all of them, but here are some of what I feel are the often overlooked blessings of hospice and palliative care.

When I say hospice is “patient driven” what I mean is that the patient decides what their treatment plan is. As medical professionals, registered nurse case managers (RNCM) make suggestions based on different changes in condition that they may notice—things from restlessness to shortness of breath. For example, the RNCM may suggest to the restless patient that they go for a walk around their home or facility. However, the patient drives their care plan. Patients always have the right to be informed of what is happening and why the RNCM is suggesting what they are. What happens if the patient doesn’t agree with their care plan? The RNCM consults with others involved in the patient care—social workers, chaplains, home health aides (HHA), and of course the medical director (i.e. doctor)—to ask for multiple options to bring to that patient. The long short is: the patient chooses what they would like, not the RNCM. Hospice empowers patients to have a greater control in their plan of care and, in turn, invites dignity at the end of life.

You know when you’re playing little league sports and there’s one game left in the season and the coach says, “we’ve got some unfinished business to take care of” right before they go on to win the championship? While I might not have the most experience winning championships (don’t get me started on my junior high baseball experience), I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of those ‘unfinished business’ lines. In my bones, I know that I’ll always have unfinished business when I come to die. Whether that’s because the person I needed to extend grace to has since died or I put off having a conversation that I needed to have, I will always have unfinished business. That said, when I come to the end of my life, I want there to be space to do that and hospice gives that space. I want to have space to know that in my limited time that I have left, I can deal with the important issues that I didn’t have the chance to (or want to) when I was healthy. Relationships between patients and their family/friends have a unique quality at the end of life because they know that relationship is ending. When we’re healthy, we think there will always be time. At the end of life, consider giving yourself or your loved one the space to finish the unfinished business.

The beautiful thing about the world we live in is that each person is unique. Even in our similarities, like being the same height, we may have a uniqueness of being born in different cities. Even if our height and birth place are similar, we might have a uniqueness of being born to different parents. Even then we have different styles of clothes, ways of speaking, etc. There are people who represent a mosaic of ethnicities, people who practice different faith traditions, people who are kind and caring (or even just plain mean)…the world around us is beautifully, and wonderfully, unique. Hospice mimics the world around us. It’s for people who have a history of mental illnesses, people who have disabilities, those who have strained relationships with loved ones, college educated and high school drop outs. Hospice care is not only for a certain class or type of people, but it represents all that the world offers us.

It may seem odd to consider end of life care a blessing, but death is not a medical event, it’s a human experience and it’s one that we all will face. Check out Beacon of Hope Hospice on the web or call (309)-760-0466 to learn more about how hospice can serve you or your loved one at the end of life.