TS Radio: Hospice Survivors and Victims with Carly Walden

Carly hosts:  Dorothy Knightly

Dorothy's husband was put into Hospice.  Unknown to them, was the fact that her husband had an infection.  Because he was in Hospice, the infection was not treated and became septic.  The infection was not treated because he had been put into "palliative care".....meaning terminal sedation.  Palliative care (terminal, hastening the end of life) is started after 'futility of care" is pronounced by the physician.

Imagine seeing your loved one drugged into a stupor so that death comes long before it should.  Refusing to treat an infection and allowing it to progress into a life-threatening event?  Withholding nutrition and hydration is standard procedure.  Add the intentional withholding of necessary medical care, and then drug the individual so that they can not cry out or complain.  It is a slow and painful death. 

We treat prisoners on death row better than we treat the elderly or the disabled.  At least a death row prisoner gets a last meal and the process of death is comparably swift, and a prisoner can appeal the efforts to end his life.  Not so in Hospice.