You should look up hospice. My grandmother received hospice care.
Yes, you definitely should look it up, Lee. I know what it is and I imagine Jeff does, too, but you need to get the information from a reliable source, with lots of details on how it works in general and in your mom's case in particular.
One of its guiding tenets, as I understand it, is that the person should always be kept as comfortable and happy as possible, so that's good news.
Dementia drugs don't do much good, but I think generally healthcare people believe they're better than nothing. But it makes sense that they would take her off them if she's going into hospice.
Atul Gawande has a lot to say about hospice in
Being Mortal. His father was in hospice care, and he followed a hospice nurse around for a day or two to see what her job was like. For the record, he seemed impressed by the care, and to have a lot of admiration for the nurse.
Side note: I talked to a woman yesterday for a story who said that while Alzheimer's cases are increasing in number, that's entirely because older people are increasing in number. (Almost half of people over 85 have some dementia.) But the cases of hospice per capita are decreasing, she said. That really surprised me. I asked her why, and she said nobody knows.
She is not a health-care professional (I'm doing a story on ageism, and she's an anti-ageism activist). I have talked to the guy who heads the Alzheimer's department at the Mayo Clinic before. He's very nice and very frank. I'd like to ask him about this.
