Braindead

Braindead

Thomas Allen

In “The Hidden Crisis in Organ Transplantation — Brain Death Diagnosis and Ethical Failures” (September 12, 2025), a Midwestern Doctor discusses the relationship between brain death and organ transplantation.

In 1968, the medical system introduced the concept of “brain death” so that it could harvest organs before the body died. Yet, brain death has never been proven equivalent to actual death. It merely defines an irreversible coma.

A significant amount of money is made from transplanting organs. Organ transplanting ranks at or near the top of the medical industry’s money makers. Everyone prospers— the hospitals, doctors, organ brokers (people who acquire and sell organs), and others — everyone except the person who makes the ultimate sacrifice: the organ donor, who usually receives nothing.

However, to be used, the organ and, therefore, the body must be alive before the organ is removed. With proper treatment, braindead patients can be and have been revived. Yet, if they are revived, many people will lose a substantial amount of money: hospitals, doctors,  organ brokers, and others. Getting rich by harvesting organs before the donor dies stretches one’s ethics to the limit. (People, usually in poor countries, have been urged to sell their organs while still alive and often receive insignificant payment compared to the market value of the organ, but this is primarily for organs like kidneys.) However, brain death offers an “ethical” way around the dilemma of removing organs from a patient while the body is still alive. The patient is declared braindead, and the organ is removed before the body dies. 

(Some braindead patients who came back to life noted that they were aware of what was happening to them. They could still feel and hear. This experience may explain a person’s awareness during near-death experiences.)

When a person dies, his organs rapidly lose viability. The brain death concept allows organs to be harvested ethically while the living body keeps the organs alive. Not only does declaring a person braindead allow the collection of viable organs, but it also reduces the cost of long-term healthcare — a strong incentive under socialized medicine to have patients declared braindead.

Copyright © 2026 Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Soul

The Soul

Thomas Allen

Is the human soul immortal or mortal? Does the soul continue to exist consciously after the body dies? Or, does it die when the body dies?

There are two views of the nature of man. One is the dualistic view, which is the popular Christian view and the pagan view. The other is the holistic view, which is the Hebrew and Biblical view.

Greek, Egyptian, and other pagan philosophers claim that the soul is immortal and continuous a conscious existence after the body dies. According to the pagan Greeks, the soul is trapped in a material body. When the body dies, the soul is liberated and continuous a conscious existence elsewhere because the soul is immortal and, therefore, indestructible. Consequently, a person cannot really die; he merely transitions to another form. Death is merely the separation of the soul and the body.

The Hebrews claim that the soul is mortal and dies with the body — that is, its conscious existence ends with the death of the body. Since the soul animates the body, it dies (ceases to have consciousness) when the body dies; it not a distinct substance. When the body dies, the soul ceases its function of the animating life-principle of the body, and, therefore, it also dies. Furthermore, according to the Hebrews, the soul and body are an indissoluble unit. Moreover, man does not have a soul; he is a soul.

While the pagans teach a dualistic nature of man (the soul is immortal and the body is mortal), the Hebrews in the Old Testament teach a holistic view (both the soul and body are mortal). The pagan view asserts that the body, which is mortal, and the soul, which is immortal, are two different substances that coexist within one human being. Nevertheless, they are two characteristics of the same person. Thus, human nature consists of two entities (a body and a soul) that function independently — the dualistic view of man.

Contrasting with the pagan idea is the Hebrew. The Hebrew idea is that of an animated body, and the soul animates the body. When one dies, the other also dies. Both the body and the soul are mortal. Consequently, human nature is an indissoluble unity where the body and soul are different aspects of the same person — the holistic view of man.

For the Hebrews of the Old Testament and the early Christians of the New Testament, immortality is a gift from God given at the resurrection. Immortality is not an innate human possession as the pagans and orthodox Christians teach.

Tertullian and Origen introduce the Greek notion of an immoral soul into Christianity. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas expounded this pagan dualistic view of human nature. Consequently, the pagan dualistic concept of man became the orthodox Christian doctrine.

During the Reformation, Calvin, Luther, and most other Protestant leaders maintained that the soul was immortal. According to Calvin and Augustine, when the body dies, the souls of believers enjoy blessings in heaven while the souls of unbelievers suffer torments in hell. (However, the Anabaptists preached the Hebrew holistic concept of the soul, i.e., the soul is mortal and ceases conscious existence when the body dies.)

Adherents of the pagan dualistic nature of man believe that death is the separation of the immortal soul from the mortal body. At the resurrection, the immortal soul is reunited with the body. Today, most Christians believe in this dualistic doctrine.

Conversely, adherents of the Hebrew holistic nature of man believe the soul like the body is mortal and, therefore, dies with the body. At the resurrection, the whole person, body and soul, is resurrected.

What Is the Soul?

What is the soul? The soul is the life-giving force; it is man’s consciousness and awareness. Consequently, the soul is that part of a being that interprets the outside world through the senses. It interprets what one sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels. Therefore, the soul and not the brain is what sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels. It is what perceives and evaluates. (Further, the soul is what gives all living creatures their life, consciousness, and awareness.  Consequently, all animals, plants, fungi, protists, and monerans have souls.)

Moreover, the soul is the seat of one’s emotions, personality, intellect, and memory. As such, it is what makes a human being human. It is that part of a person that believes, decides, reasons, judges, rejoices, sorrows, loves, hates, doubts, and the like. Furthermore, from the soul come man’s moral and religious attributes.

The soul is the mind as opposed to the brain. (Some theologians claim that the spirit of man is the mind instead of the soul. [See the last paragraph for a discussion on the spirit of man.]) Through the soul does a person perceive and understand the material world. However, the soul does not reside in the brain and has no corporal nature. On the contrary, the soul is distinct from and independent of the brain.

Although signals received from the senses are analyzed in the brain, the soul is what understands and gives this information meaning and significance. The brain merely serves as a vehicle delivering information to the soul. The soul observes and interprets the information formed in the brain.

The existence of the soul refutes materialism, and, therefore, it repudiates Darwinism and evolution. Materialists believe that the movement of chemicals in the brain controls a person’s thoughts, emotions, and actions. Blind, unconscious atoms and electrical signals cannot be the source of awareness, perception, thought, beliefs, emotions, and the like.

Some theologians distinguish between the soul of man and the spirit of man. For these theologians, the soul of man is identified with the secular exercise of an individual. The spirit of man is that part of human nature that allies with God. Also, some identify the spirit of man as what makes man a rational being. However, many treat the soul and the spirit as two names for the same entity. This article does not distinguish between the two.

Reference

Bacchiocchi, Samuele. Popular Beliefs: Are They Biblical? Berrien Springs Michigan: Biblical Perspectives, 2008.

Davis, John D. The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible. Revised by Henry Snyder Gehman. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 1944.

Douglas, J.D. et al., editors. The New Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids: Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1962.

Jacobus, Melanchthon W., Edward E. Norse, and Andrew C. Zenos, editors. A New Standard Bible Dictionary. New York, New York: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1926.

Martin, William C. The Layman’s Bible Encyclopedia. Nashville, Tennessee: The Southwest Company, 1964.

Tenney, Merrill C., editor. The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids: Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1967.

Yahya, Harun (Adnan Oktar). Darwin’s Dilemma the Soul. First English edition. Editor Tam Mossman. Translator Carl Nino Rossini. Istanbul, Turkey: Global Publishing, 2008.

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Thomas Allen

    15. Except for the heretical subordinationists and modal trinitarians, one question that Trinitarians have never been able to answer satisfactorily, except perhaps to themselves, is how three distinct persons, each of whom is fully God, are not three Gods. That is, how can God consist of three distinct Gods without being three Gods? Most Trinitarians just assert that three Gods are one God with no real Scriptural proof. Others claim that it is all a mystery beyond human comprehension, although they offer no Scripture that explicitly states such mystery. How can the Godhead consist of three persons, each of whom is fully God, while not having three Gods? Furthermore, where do the Scriptures explicitly claim that God is three persons, three beings, three Gods, three modes, three attributes, or three somewhats, etc.?
    16. The more honest Trinitarians admit the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere expounded in the New Testament. It cannot be found in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Neither Paul nor any of the other apostles taught it — and would not understand today’s orthodox Trinity Doctrine. The Trinity Doctrine rests upon the authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope: The Church declares that the Trinity Doctrine is true; therefore, it is true.
    17. The Trinity Doctrine seems to have been developed — albeit, most likely, subconsciously — primarily to justify error. Christ instructed people to pray to and worship God the Father, whom Christ claimed was the only true God (John 17:3). He never instructed them to pray to or worship the Messiah; neither did Paul, Peter, nor other apostles. After the apostles died, people began praying to and worshiping Christ. Instead of correcting this error, the leaders and intellects of the Church began applying Greek philosophy to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to justify worshiping Christ. The same can be said for other errors that became doctrines of the Catholic Church. Examples are praying to saints and Mary and declaring Mary to be the mother of God (she eventually supplanted Christ, who had become God, as the mediator between man and God). Instead of correcting errors, Church leaders and intellects sought to justify them.
    18. Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism have defined and defended the Trinity Doctrine. They provide the terms, e.g., one substance, person, and trinity, used to define the Trinity.
    19. Unlike various subordination doctrines, the orthodox Trinity Doctrine did not grow organically from the Scriptures. Moreover, many Scriptures that Trinitarians use to support their doctrine testify against it.
    20. If the Trinitarians are correct, then the God of the Old Testament cannot be the God of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God is described as a unipersonal God. Most Trinitarians now admit that the Old Testament describes a unipersonal God and not a triune God. However, according to the Trinitarians, the New Testament describes God as a triune God. That is, three Gods, persons, or whatevers are one God. Moreover, a triune God of three Gods, three persons, or three whatevers differs significantly from a unipersonal God of one God, one person, or one whatever. Now more Trinitarians, especially Catholics, are admitting that the Scriptures do not support the Trinity Doctrine as expressed in the Athanasian Creed or other similar creeds. It relies on revelation and Church tradition.
    If the Trinitarians and Jewish rabbis are correct, then Marcion was correct when he said that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two different Gods. However, his explanation of the two different Gods was incorrect.
    21. Honest Trinitarians acknowledge that they worship a triune God. Thus, they are not monotheists in the sense of the Old Testament worship of a unipersonal God, whom good Jews worship. If Christians claim that the God of the Old Testament is a triune God and the Jews claim that he is a unipersonal God, then either one is wrong or God suffers from dissociative identity disorder. (If Christians assert that the Jews are wrong, then they need to explain their antisemitism.)
    22. Trinitarians claim that God became flesh so that he could experience suffering, ignorance, death, etc. like humans. Such a claim impinges on God’s omniscience. If God is omniscient, he knows how it is to suffer and die like humans. He knows how it is to be a dog or a flea without becoming one.
    Furthermore, if most theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, are correct about God being impassible, how could he experience pain, etc. like a human? Yet, many Trinitarians claim that God had to become man so that he could suffer like man.
    Moreover, how could God really die and still be eternal? If he were to die, he would cease being eternal. Or, is the pagan Greek idea of death, which most Christians believe, correct: Death is not a cessation of consciousness; it is a metamorphosis from one state of conscious being to another state of conscious being. And, the Hebrew idea of death is wrong: Death is the cessation of consciousness; this is the concept taught in the Old Testament. If death is a metamorphosis, then the Son changed state or condition. An attribute of God is that he is unchangeable. In any event, God the Son either ceased being eternal or changed state. Therefore, he ceases being equal to God the Father, who is eternal and unchangeable. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine collapses.
    According to the Hebrews, the body and soul are one. When the body dies, the soul also dies. All consciousness ceases at death.
    According to the pagan Greeks, the body and soul are two. When the body dies, the soul continues to exist in a conscious state.
    23. The triune God is not a personal God, a real being with a personality, will, and desire. He, or perhaps more correctly, it, is an essence, substance, and entity — an abstraction.
    24. If Jesus is God, why does he always pray to the Father and never to himself, who is also Deity, or to the Holy Spirit? Why does he ask the Father for what is in his own power as God the Son?
    25. If God the Father is the God of God the Son (Jesus declares that his Father is his God in John 20:17), then who is the God of God the Father? For God the Son, who has a God, to maintain his equality with God the Father, God the Father must also have a God. Likewise, God the Holy Spirit must also have a God. Who is the God of God the Holy Spirit? Moreover, if Jesus is God, how can he have a God?
    26. According to the Trinity Doctrine, the Son is eternal and is also begotten. He who is begotten cannot be eternal because he has a beginning — when he is begotten. An eternal being has no beginning or ending. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine contradicts itself with an oxymoron: the Son being begotten and eternal.
    Moreover, God is self-existing. He who is begotten, the Son, is not and cannot be self-existing. Furthermore, how can an unbegotten being, the Father, be the same kind of being as a begotten being, the Son?
    27. Unless the separationists are correct, why did Jesus cry out while he was dying on the cross? After all, according to many Trinitarians, Jesus’ God nature did not abandon his human nature while he was dying on the cross. As God the Son indwelt him, why did he need to cry out to God? God was already a part of him.
    28. To prevent God from dying on the cross, Trinitarians must have Jesus’ divine nature abandoning Jesus’ human nature by or at the time Jesus dies. The Valentinians solve the problem of God dying by having Christ, who is the divine nature, separating from Jesus, who is the human nature, just before the crucifixion. To avoid having God die, Trinitarians must adopt a Valentinian-like doctrine. However, to avoid the heresy of Valentinianism, Trinitarians seem to have the human nature of Jesus leaving the divine nature of Jesus at death. Whereas Valentinians have the divine leaving the human, Trinitarians have the human leaving the divine.
    29. Trinitarians subvert the title of the “Son of God” into “God the Son,” a title that the Scriptures never give Jesus. The two phrases mean different things. “X the son” has an entirely different meaning than “the son of X.” Isaac the son means Isaac as the son of Abraham; he is not Abraham. The son of Isaac means Jacob; he is not Isaac; nor is he Abraham. Likewise, “God the Son” has a different meaning than “the Son of God” and refers to a different person, being, entity, or whatever.
    30. When Jesus speaks, is he speaking in his divine nature as God or is he speaking in his human nature as man? Most assume that when he says something that sounds godly to them (e.g., “I and the Father are one” – John 10:30), he speaks as God. However, if he says something that sounds humanly to them (e.g., “the Father is greater than I” – John 14:28), he speaks as man. How do they know with absolute certainty which is speaking? Moreover, being ignorant of a triune God and the incarnation of God, which thus made Jesus have two natures and two wills, his audience would have always understood him speaking as a man. (Clergy often preach “context relevance” and the “way the audience at that time who received the remarks would have understood them.” Jesus’ audience at that time would have always understood him to be speaking as a man. If he intended otherwise, he was deceiving, i.e., lying to, his audience.)
    Where does the Bible expressly state that Jesus has two natures and two wills? Where does the Bible even strongly imply such?
    31. The doctrine of Jesus possessing two natures raises several questions. Did the two natures exist before the Incarnation? If they did, how did or could the Father and Son still be of one substance? If they did not, when and how was Jesus’ human nature combined with his divine nature? What prevented the divine nature from dominating? How can Jesus’ humanity be like the rest of humanity if he lacked the ability to sin like the rest of humanity? What Scriptures support the answers to these questions?
    Jesus was tempted like all other men (Hebrews 4:15). If he were God or had a divine nature, he could not have been tempted like other men. Being tempted like other men implies the ability to sin. Under the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus could not sin. An attribute of God is his inability to sin. If Jesus consisted of two natures, divine and human, then his divine nature would have coerced the human will not to sin.
    32. An angel strengthened Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. However, if he possessed divinity in conjunction with humanity, why would he have needed such assistance? Such assistance would have been wholly unnecessary.
    33. When Christ speaks of himself, he uses the pronoun “I.” He is speaking of his whole person and not of only part of his person. According to Trinitarian Christology, Christ is one person who consists of a divine nature and a human nature. So, when he says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28 ), he is speaking of himself as the whole person consisting of both divine and human natures. Therefore, by this assertion, he declares himself, both of his natures, inferior to God the Father.
    34. If Thomas calling Jesus God (John 20:28) identifies Jesus as one of the Persons of God, then God making Moses God (Exodus 7:1) should make Moses a Person of God. If not, why not? After all, God speaks much more authoritatively than Thomas.
    35. An important part of the Christology of Trinitarianism is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Not until 451 was this doctrine formerly defined when the Council of Chalcedon promulgated it. The reason that 350 years were needed to develop it was that nowhere does the Scriptures described such a doctrine — although the first chapter of John may weakly hinted at it. Moreover, the doctrine of the Incarnation resembles pagan mythology more than biblical truth. That is, the notion that God Himself descended from Heaven, took the form of a man, and dwelt among humans strongly resembles pagan mythology.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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One Thing Your Pastor Will Not Tell You

One Thing Your Pastor Will Not Tell You

Thomas Allen

    In the March/April 2016 issue of Grace in Focus, Phil Congdon had an article titled “10 Things Your Minister Will Never Tell You (If He Believes the Bible!)” He identifies these ten things:
    1. Creation is a myth;
    2. Our purpose is not to glorify God;
    3. The Bible is full of errors;
    5. We are saved by works;
    6. The role of women (he is referring to teaching current social norms that are destroying society is the correct role for women instead of teaching wives to submit to their husbands and women not to teach men or to have authority roles over men, which the Bible teaches);
    7. People are born gay;
    8. Other religions lead to God;
    9. No eternal hell (see comment below);
    10. Jesus made mistakes.
He explains why a Biblical pastor will never tell his congregations any of these things.
    Mr. Congdon omits one item from his list of things nearly all ministers will never tell his congregation if he believes the Bible. That is interracial marriage and mating are acceptable to God. This item is so politically taboo that I would be surprised that even Mr. Congdon would ever teach the Biblical condemnation of miscegenation.
    From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible condemns interracial marriages and mating. Here are some of the verses that condemn or at least argue against miscegenation: Genesis 6:1-7, Genesis 24:1-4, Genesis 26:34-35, Genesis 28:1-2, 6-7, Genesis chap. 34, Exodus 11:7, Exodus 33:16, Exodus 34:10-16, Leviticus 19:19, Leviticus 20:26, Leviticus 21:14, Numbers chap. 23, 24, and 25, Deuteronomy 7:1-4, Deuteronomy 23:2, Joshua 23:12-13, Judges 3:5-8, 1 King 8:53, 1 King 11:1-8, 1 King 16: 30, 31, 1 King 21:25, Ezra chap. 9 and 10, Nehemiah 8:1-18, 9:1-3, Nehemiah 10:28-31, Nehemiah 13:1-3, 23-31, Psalm 106:28-35, Isaiah 2:1-9 (esp. v. 6), Jeremiah 2:19-25, 29, Ezekiel 16:15-39, Ezekiel 44:6-23, Hosea 5:3-7, Hosea 6:7-10, Hosea 10:1-10, 1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 1 Corinthians 6:18, 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 (esp. v. 8), Hebrews 12:12-17, Hebrews 13:4, 2 Peter 2:9-16, Jude 3-11, Revelations 2:12-14, Revelations 2:18-23, Revelations 5:9, 7:9, 11:9, 13:7, 14:6, 17:15, 21:24, 22:2. Deuteronomy 23:2 summarizes this whole issue: “No half-bred may be admitted to the assembly of the Yahweh; not even his descendants to the tenth generation may be admitted to the Assembly of Yahweh” (The New Jerusalem Bible).
    Extremely rare is a pastor who does not believe the Bible who will teach that interracial marriage and mating are wrong. Almost as rare is a pastor who does believe the Bible teaching that interracial marriage and mating are wrong.

Comment to item 9.
    Although Mr. Congdon does not state in his article whether unsaved people are punished (tormented) forever in hell, other writers for Grace in Focus do. Yet, all the writers for Grace in Focus teach that one achieves eternal life by believing in Jesus for eternal life. According to John 6:47 (“. . . He that believeth on me hath everlasting life”), those who believe in Jesus, the saved, receive eternal life. If the saved believe in Jesus for eternal life, in whom or what does the unsaved believe for eternal life if they are punished (tormented) forever in hell?
    If man’s consciousness, soul, spirit, essence, or whatever is naturally immortal such that it can endure eternal punishment (torment), then Jesus is misleading us with his claim in John 6:47 that belief in him is the source of eternal life. If man’s consciousness or whatever is immortal, then he has eternal life whether or not he believes in Jesus. Consciousness or whatever has to be eternal if an unsaved person is to be punished (tormented) forever. Thus, death is not the cessation of life, but a metamorphosis from one form to another. Faith in Jesus does not determine whether one has eternal life or not, as man, being immortal, naturally has eternal life. It merely determines where he will spend that eternal life. If Jesus meant that, why did he not say so? His statement suggests that those who do not believe in him are not immortal and do not have eternal life. Only those who believe in him become immortal by that faith.

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Some More Reflections

Some More Reflections
Thomas Allen

What follows are random thoughts about life with Deborah.

‒ Whenever we had an argument or disagreement, Deb was usually right. I seldom told her that she was right, which speaks poorly of me. However, if she were paying any attention, she would have realized that I concluded that she was right. Most of the time, I tried to change things so that such an argument would not occur in the future.

‒ As far as I know, I was the only one who prayed for Deb to get well. Every prayer uttered in my presence was a mealy-mouth-God-comfort type of prayer. One of those types of prayers that cannot be verified whether it was answered. Since I was praying for Deb to be healed and to come home disease free and she did not, then that means one of three things. One is God lies. Two is that the Bible is written the way that a shyster lawyer writes a contract: a bold promised is made in one place, but voided in another. In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given. . . . For everyone who asks receives. . . .” As I asked and did not receive, then this simple promise must have been voided elsewhere. That is deception, which is a lie. (One popular response to unanswered prayer is that the prayer did not have enough faith. How much faith is enough? When the number of failed prayers is considered, that must be a humanly impossible threshold to cross. Up to the last day, I thought that Deb was going to come home. Based on the quoted verse all the faith that one needs to have is faith to ask.) Three is that someone was praying for her death and God valued that person’s prayer more than everyone praying for her to be healed. (I would not be surprised if people at hospice were praying for her death. Those people love death.)

‒ Once we married, I always considered the money that I earned as “our” money. It was as much Deb’s and mine, i.e., it belonged to the family. She had the hardest time comprehending that concept. For the longest time, she considered the money that I earned as mine. One of the first things that I did after we married was to put her name on my checking and savings accounts.

‒ At one of Deb’s street shows in Wake Forest, a woman came up to Deb’s art car with her daughter. She commented to her daughter that Deb’s painting was a color-by-the-number painting. That comment really made Deb angry. She could hardly restrain herself.

‒ When she had her art car, she used it at all her street shows to display her art that she was selling.

‒ When I married Deb, down inside myself, I expected nothing but an idealistic, dreamlike marriage. Deb delivered it. Our marriage was not always smooth. We needed time to adjust to each other. We never gave up and worked on solving and eliminating conflict. Over time, our marriage did run smoothly and became idyllic with little conflict.

‒ We used to have a Jonathan apple tree, which died. Deb liked Jonathan apples and wanted me to plant another one. After I retired, I finally got around to planting another one. However, it has never borne any fruit. She will never eat an apple from that tree.

‒ Deb brought me the happiest 30 years of my life — the only years worth living. She made my dreams come true. I believe that I did the same for her although she never did become a renowned artist. Nevertheless, she had a devoted husband, who tried to love her more than she loved him. I had a devoted wife who always succeeded in loving me more than I loved her.

‒ The year of 2011 was a year of a great blessing and a great curse. I was blessed with the honor and privilege of serving Deb during her last months of life. I was cursed with the failure of not protecting her from hospice.

‒ When Deb died, so did I. Not physically of course, but I died every other way. My great punishment for failing her is to linger on as a lonely, unhappy old man — doomed forever to eat alone, to sleep alone, and to be alone. I fear that I am condemned to relive the 1970s, the worst decade of my life. It was a decade of loneliness, with defeat after defeat. I was nothing — unwanted and lost. No one wanted anything that I had to offer: love, devotion, fidelity, and the like — totally worthless virtues. I fear that never again will I know the happiness and joy that she brought. Getting over grieving her was easy compared to going on living without her. That is living as opposed to existing. I need hope, but hope does not exist. Instead of looking forward to a future without her, I need to look forward to a future with someone. Without that I would rather die quickly and join her.

‒ Deb is the only woman whoever saw anything of value in me. I fear that she will remain the only woman to do so. No one else will find what she found. Unless someone does, I have no future. Existence not life lies ahead. May it be short.

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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My Experience with a Hospice House the Last Week

My Experience with a Hospice House
Or Thirteen Days of Hell
The Last Week
Thomas Allen

Friday, October 28. My wife began the day with a shower around 5 a.m. She enjoys the showers, but they are extremely fatiguing. She seems more fatigued today than yesterday. She is extremely weak and slept most of the day. (I don’t know if her sleepiness is from fatigue or changes in her medication.) She tries to push the control buttons on the bed, but usually does not have the strength to do so. Overall, my wife seems to have regressed today. Although she is beginning to eat some, her consumption is less than half of what she was consuming last week before hospice got a hold of her. Hospice policy seems to be that food does a cancer patient no good — at least that is what the doctor said. Hospice has certainly brought her down.

My wife’s pain seems to be increasing, so they are now delivering her pain medication through an automatic drip. When the hospital put my wife on a pain medicine drip, it fed the drip through a saline solution, which kept the body hydrated. Here, hospice is determined not to provide the body any kind of hydratin unless the patient is conscious enough to drink. Its drip is just pain medication. Also, the amount of pain medication has increased from a few days ago.

One of the comments made around here when I expressed my concerned about dehydration was that a cancer patient can go for weeks without water. (When the doctor told me that a lack of food does not lead to starvation because of the process of the body dying from a lack of nutrients differs with cancer from that of typical starvation, she did not address the dehydration issue.) An internet search shows that 7 to 10 days is about the limit for a healthy person under ideal climatic conditions. According to one site, the record for going without water before death is 11 days.

Looks like they are moving her back to a drugged out zombie. It is nice when she is alert and can communicate her needs, eat, and drink.

I feel like I am in a tag team wrestling match. I cannot get back to my corner, and the other side keeps bringing in fresh wrestlers and often more than one at a time.

The social worker is certainly pushing to get my wife planted, or at least she comes across that way.

P.S. Until my first-hand experience at this hospice house, I had a high opinion of hospice and have even given money to hospice. However, my experience here has turn me 180 degrees. I do not believe that hospice deliberately tries to kill anyone, but its action or inaction certainly seems to shorten life. For example, it could keep the body hydrated at least until hydration becomes dangerous when medication keeps the patient a zombie so that he cannot drink.

Saturday, October 29. This place can be nosier at night than the hospital was during the day. Around 1 a.m. they changed my wife’s sheets. I guess if you are a drugged out zombie, it matters little when the sheets are changed. Around 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. I gave my wife a little water to drink. Also, around 5 a.m. My wife complained about her back; the nurse gave her a dose of pain killer. Hospice’s solution for everything is more pain killer. Could my wife’s back ache be caused by the pillow they put under her back? Or by lying on her back so much? Don’t know. (In the hospital when she got tired of lying on her back, she could turn herself on her side. She has not been able to that since hospice got her.) They have returned her to a state where it is hard for her to tell another what the problem is. At least hospice is again happy. It has her in a drugged stupor. My wife slept most of the day. I have been able to give her a few swallows of water now and then.

I know that she is thirsty, but she is not wake often enough to keep her thirst quenched. Two days ago, she could pick up a cup of water and drink using a straw. This morning she could no longer hold a cup or use a straw. (This afternoon for the short time that she was conscious, she could drink with a straw, but was too weak to hold a cup.) I have to hold the cup to her mouth and slowly pour the water into her mouth.

The two days that she was conscious much of the time, she drank a quart, and perhaps more, of liquids. The days that she is a zombie, she drinks perhaps 8 ounces, and I give her most of that.

If I were not here giving her something to drink whenever I can, she would be in worse shape than she is. Unfortunately, I have to give her water under less than ideal conditions. Most people around here seem to believe that they have quenched a thirst by swabbing out her mouth, which they do about twice a day. (People who come here and do not have family or friends around most of the time to assist them, I am convince will die a week or two sooner.)

My wife’s urine has become extremely dark.

If a person cannot drink, if IV hydration will not cause more harm to the body than good, and if the care givers withhold IV hydration, then to my feeble mind they have certainly contributed to the person’s death and may even have caused it.

I have seen only two aides take the time to feed my wife. I am typically here 60 hours out of every 72. She cannot eat when she is a zombie.

This afternoon, they bathed my wife in the bed and changed her gown. Bathing is usually a trying task for her. Surprisingly, she was alert after the bath and watched some TV for about 15 minutes before dozing off again. She woke up again around 5:30 p.m. and stayed awake for about an hour and watched a little TV.

One commentator noted, “Don’t be surprise when you ask a surgeon about a health problem, he recommends an operation. Surgery is all he knows.” Likewise, with hospice, all it knows is pain killers. All problems can be solved with pain killers. A surgeon says you need an operation: What is your problem? Surgery solves all problems. Hospice says you need more pain medication: What is your problem? Pain medication solves all problems.

I feel like I have hired someone to remodel the kitchen, and they have misaligned everything. The pipes leak, and all the appliances have shorted out.

After observing all these doctors over the past 4½ months, I conclude that a well-trained technician could do 90 percent of what they do. I have yet seen one think “outside the box.” They all stay “within the lines.” Whatever does not fit their preconceived cooky cutter mold, they force into the mold.

Sunday, October 30. My wife was awake and thirsty when I arrived. I gave her some water to drink. A few minutes later, I gave her some more. She wanted to hold the cup and put it to her mouth. She could hold the cup, but hospice has gotten her so weak that she could not get it to her mouth. Watching her try to put the cup to her mouth was heartbreaking. With a straw, she did manage to drink some. However, she is having difficulty drawing through a straw. I usually have to hold the cup to her mouth and slowly pour, but I have trouble judging whether I am going too slow or too fast. It was nice last week when she could do this for herself. She said that they pumped her full of drugs earlier today. Last night, they made her potty in a diaper. This morning she used a bedpan.

Unless hospice is trying to hasten the death of its patients, I don’t know why it allows them to get so dehydrated. If my wife and most, if not all, of the patients here were dogs, these folks would be cited for animal cruelty for providing inadequate water.

My wife has not eaten anything since Thursday. They have her in such a stupor that she cannot eat. Since she has been here, she has consumed less all totaled than she did in her last day in the hospital.

She has gotten so weak, she can hardly talk. I don’t know how much longer she can last. I hope these people are proud of themselves. They are killing her quicker than the disease. I don’t know how they can sleep. I suspect that if a good autopsy was performed on deceased patients, the findings would show that most patients died of causes other than the disease.

I wonder if it would do my wife any good to claim that she is a Catholic. The Catholic directive is that patients should be provided with adequate water and nutrition, even by artificial means if necessary, to ensure that they die from the disease and not from a lack of the necessity of life. “A person should die from one's illness and not because a basic necessity of life was denied them.”

Monday, October 31. When I awoke this morning, I found my wife just like hospice likes to keep its patients: in a drugged stupor. The nurses worked on my wife several times during the night. Once was to treat her hemorrhoids. I am surprise that they are not treating the hemorrhoids by just giving more pain medication. Pain medication seems to be hospice’s solution for everything. I did manage to give her a few swallows of liquid just after midnight. She thought it was Friday. She must be extremely thirsty by now; she has less than two cups of water per day for the past several days.

I found a wet towel on my wife’s forehead when I checked her this morning. She had developed a fever during the night.

Here is the Catholic position on providing food and water to hospice patients:
http://www.catholicsun.org/2009/sept3/local/directives-text.html
My comment is posted. Here is the comment:

The hospice house that my wife is in does not believe in providing any more food or water than what the patient can take orally. I expressed my concerns about my wife starving and becoming dehydrated. The doctor claims that nutrition does a cancer patient no good. She also claims that cancer patients do not starve because the mechanism by which the cancer deprives the body of nutrition differs from typical starvation. About dehydration, one of the administrative honchos told me that IVs were not used for hydration because in the last days additional fluids may do more harm than good.

I wonder if my wife would fair better if she reclaimed her Catholic roots. Would this place abide by this directive?

After I complained about my wife being thirsty all the time, the nurse gave her some water with a syringe. Later, I was able to give her about 2 cups of water. I keep telling these people that my wife is thirsty, but most act like they don’t believe me. Most give her a few swallows and believe that they have solved the problem.

When the doctors were talking about sending my wife somewhere for pain management, I naively thought that they meant having her pain minimized while maintaining her alertness, awareness, and as much mobility as possible so that she could go home. I never thought that it meant keeping her in the zombie state of a drugged stupor.

According to the doctor, my wife does not need any additional fluids beyond what she can orally consume. An IV would make things worse. She also noted that my wife’s skin is showing signs of not being able to repair its — a lack of protein. (No food, no protein for skin repair other than what the body can cannibalize from itself.) My wife’s dark urine is a sign of improper liver and kidney functioning. Judging by the doctor’s comments, my wife will not make it to her 58th birthday. If she does, she probably will not be in a conscious state. The doctor said that her fever this morning is a sign that the body is losing the ability to regulate its temperature. This doctor seems so focus on death, that everything is a sign of imminent demise.

The nurse fed her a little bit of ice cream, but she had some difficulty in swallowing. They were able to shift her in the bed without additional pain medication.

I asked DHHS a simple “yes” or “no” question: “Are hospice facilities required to keep the patients in their facilities adequately hydrated?” This is the answer that I got: “The expectation is to hydrate patients within reasonable care. Hydration should be based on medical decisions. Thank you for your inquiry.” This person has the makings of a good politician. He answers “yes” in the first sentence, and voids his yes answer in the second sentence. In other words, whatever the doctor declares adequate is adequate because the doctor will always claim that his decision was a medically based decision. The hospice doctor claims adequate hydration can be achieved orally and that hydration beyond oral consumption is not only medically unnecessary, but is dangerous. Not unexpectedly, DHHS sided with the doctor.

Tonight my wife wanted to turn over on her side. She tried to turn herself, but could not because of her weakness. Ten days ago when she came in here, she could turn herself to her side without aid.

Tonight, my wife asked the same question that I have been asking. How can she excrete anything if she has not eaten anything.

Tuesday, November 1. I was up several time after midnight and gave my wife water. She was moved several times to get her off her back. They finally got her on her stomach so that she could not roll back on her back. She has been complaining about her back hurting. We are trying to get her off her back for a while to see if that will cause the aching to cease instead of giving a dose of pain killer every time she complains about her back. Thirst and backache have been her biggest complain recently. My wife sleep most of the day, even more than yesterday.

Today, the social worker asked me if had started making funeral arrangements. I told her that I had requested some information. She seems eager to plant my wife although she probably views her actions as getting me prepared for the inevitable.

My wife has a slight fever.

My wife has been wearing a diaper for the last several days. She has found it highly irritating and has tried to push it off. If she had the strength, she probably would have gotten it off. They left the diaper off today after they bathed her. The nurse said her face look much more relaxed without the diaper. I believe she is more comfortable now.

My wife seems to have gotten to the point of giving up. She also seems to be losing her awareness.

Considering that I got about of cup of water into her and finally got the nurses to get her in a position to sleep relatively comfortable, I regret not spending tonight with her. Who will take care of her and give her water?

The social worker put a humidifier in my wife’s room. That should help her dryness. The room is dry, and I wake up extremely dry and thirsty. My wife sleeps with her mouth open, which drys her out more.

I have just about giving up on fighting the system, but not for my wife’s life. Everywhere I turn, I am blocked. I never thought that when we left the house to go to the doctor’s office about 6 weeks ago that my wife would never again see home — the place where she has lived since April 1982.

The doctor said that she was ordering some artificial salvia for my wife to keep her mouth from becoming so dry.

They are still working on shrinking her hemorrhoids. The nurse found that my wife’s catheter was obstructed, so she fixed it. My wife still has not gotten use to the catheter; she wants to get up and pee like a human.

Ten days ago before she entered hospice, she could pick up a cup and drink all the water she wanted. Now she is totally dependent on others to provide her water. For two days last week, she could pick up a cup and put it to her month. Moreover, her voice is now usually so week that understanding what she wants has become difficult.

Nearly every doctor that I have encountered during my wife’s ordeal are certainly believers in “better living through chemistry” as my wife said about her oncologist.

Seeing what a invalid my wife has become is heartbreaking. Actually, she became an invalid shortly after entering the hospice house on Friday, October 21, and has continued to deteriorate ever since except for some improvement the middle of last week.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011. When I arrived this morning, my wife was asleep or semi-asleep, it is hard to tell which at times, and the aides were in the process of washing her off. She is sleeping more and is seldom in a state of full conscious. Except a few brief moments, she slept all day — even in the afternoon when she is usually more awake.

My wife and I certainly were mislead on the hospice trip. We thought that she was going there to find the proper dosage of pain medication, and then she would go home in about a week. That was the goal that they were working on at the hospital, or at least that is what they lead us to believe. Why else would they have wanted to send my wife to a skill nursing home for more adjustments to the medication? The reason she ended in the hospice house instead of a nursing home was the insurance company. It rejected the nursing home, but accepted the hospice house. Apparently, it believed that hospice would kill her much quicker than the nursing home and thus reduce its expenses.

The doctor felt my wife’s feet and knees and found them warm, which is suppose to be a good sign.

My wife remains thirsty, but is beginning to have difficulty swallowing. I am beginning to fell like Elijah’s Baal priests.

Barring divine intervention, my wife will never see her new refrigerator. I will be surprised if she will see my next birthday much less hers. I plan to spend the night with her on my birthday; most likely, she will be unconscious the whole time.

While I was going through the interview stage at the hospice house, I commented on my wife being able to walk to the bathroom with a walker, about putting her in a wheel chair and letting her sit in the sunroom, drinking Ensure, etc. I keep getting looks of amazement and “you got to be kidding.” Now I know why I was getting those looks. Apparently, they knew that my wife would be turned into an invalid when they got their hands on her.

Thursday, November 3. According to the doctor and nurse, my wife has only a few days left at most and perhaps only a few hours.

When I woke up, my wife was as I left her when I went asleep: She was asleep. When I left about 8:00 p.m. Tuesday, she was asleep and, except for a few brief moments Wednesday morning and when the aides shifted her, she has been asleep ever since — or at best only semi-conscious. I don’t know if she will ever awaken again except for a moment here and there.

The nurse said that my wife’s knees were cool this morning and showed some change.

In this battle that I have been fighting with and for my wife, I feel like that British regiment whose commander disliked the amount of time his troops were taking to move through the trenches to the front line. So, he sent them over the top. By the time the regiment almost reached the British front line, 90 percent was gone.

My wife’s illness certainly has put things in perspective. Everything fades in importance compared to her. She gives value to everything. She is truly the good wife described in Proverbs. The writer of Proverbs must have had her in mind.

I believe that my wife would have been much better off if I had taken her home instead of letting hospice get its hands on her. If I had taken her home, most likely she would still be alert and able to feed herself, pick up a cup of water and put it to her mouth, go to the bathroom, etc. instead of being the zombie that she has become and unable to eat or drink, much less feed herself. If I knew what hospice was going to do to her, I would have taken her home. When she arrived at the hospice house, it was as though she stepped out of a window on the 50th floor and fell into the sub-basement. She certainly could not have faired any worse at home than she has here.

The nurse told me that my wife’s feet are starting to turn blue and are swelling. Her heart beat is rapid, and she has some congestion. According to the nurse, she may have only a few days left at best. The doctor concurs: At best my wife has only a few days; it could be only hours. She also has a fever. They are trying to keep her bowels moving.

Hospice is winning. Barring divine intervention, my wife does not have much time left.

My wife has been moaning a good deal this afternoon. The nurse has been giving her more dosages of pain medications.

This afternoon, the nurse examined her and found her feet and knees in worse condition than this morning.

I noticed that the company for which my wife’s oncologist works has a commercial that concatenates a collection of “c” words, such as “compassion,” “caring,” and “comradery.” It fails to contain “cure,” which is what its customers really want. Most would cheerfully forgo the other “c” words for the omitted “c” word.

I expect all the children to be here tomorrow. I hope she lasts that long. Time is short.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I am hoping for the best birthday ever, but am preparing for the worst birthday ever. The spark of hope and faith grows dim.

I left my wife in the afternoon (Thursday) to restock my supplies so that I could stay with her Thursday night through the weekend. Also, I talked with the funeral home about arrangements in case of the miracle that I am hoping for and expecting fails, and also to placate the gently nagging social worker. Barring a miracle, the current plan is for her to go from here to the crematory. Later we will have a service at the funeral home with her ashes in the urn.

My wife’s breathing is beginning to come somewhat choppy. Later it became faint. I continue to talk to her and hopefully give her encouragement.

I know that I am among the dullest of knives in the drawer, but I though something was strange when one of the first thing hospice did was to connect up my wife’s port and give her a shot. I had thought, and my wife also thought, that she had come here to continue the work of the doctors at the hospital. At the hospital, the doctors were trying to find the appropriate dosage of oral pain killers to keep her pain under control so that she could go home. We thought hospice would continue that work. When I returned Saturday and found my wife as zombie, I begin to realize that hospice’s objective was not to fine tune my wife’s pain medication and send her home. I soon realized that its objective was to send her to the morgue as quickly as possible. From what I have heard from other sources, two weeks seems to be about the time hospice takes to kill a patient. I am still convinced that hospice shorten my wife’s life by weeks if not months.

My wife has past over the great divide. She died sometime between 9:30 and 11:30. I am glad that I changed my plans and stayed with her tonight.

Hospice and the atheist won.

Concluding remarks. I finally did get to bring my wife home. Her ashes rest in an urn in our bedroom.

If at all possible, do not let anyone about whom you care enter a hospice house. It is like the roach motel: they check in, but they don’t check out.

Thanks to hospice, I will have to live the rest of my life with the guilt that I failed to fight hard enough to save my wife from hospice’s covert euthanasia. I must live with the guilt that I am responsible for my wife’s premature death. Thank you hospice for all you have done to my wife and me!

First week

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

 More articles on Deb.

My Experience with a Hospice House the First Week

My Experience with a Hospice House Or Thirteen Days of Hell
The First Week
Thomas Allen

Introduction. My wife entered a hospice house about 4:00 p.m., Friday, October 21, 2011, for pain management. Every day or two, I sent an e-mail to family and friends reporting her condition and my observations and experiences and conclusions drawn on those observations and experiences. What follows are my observations, experiences, and conclusions contained in those e-mails. They are presented for each day.

Let me preface this article with the following background. First, for the most part the nurses and aides provide my wife good care.

Second, we were deceived. We thought that my wife was going to the hospice house to fine tune the work that the doctors had been doing at the hospital. At the hospital, the doctors were trying to find the right regime of oral pain medication to control my wife’s pain so that she could go home. We thought that work would continue at the hospice house. Were we surprised! Either my wife’s oncologist and colleagues changed their goal without informing my wife, or the hospice doctor ignored their goal.

Third, when my wife left the hospital, she could with the aid of a walker get herself out of bed, walk to the restroom, take care of her bodily needs, walk back to bed, and get into bed. Moving obstacles out of the way was the only real assistance that she needed. Also, with the aid of a walker, she could walk to a chair, set herself down, and get herself up. Moreover, she could converse, watch TV, change channels, read a newspaper, call a nurse if needed, bathe herself with a wash cloth, feed herself although she did need someone to open some of the containers, etc. Within hours after arriving at the hospice house, she could do none of these things. Hospice quickly turned her into a zombie. She remained an invalid for her brief 13-day stay. Except for about two days, she did not eat anything, and then she could not feed herself. She could seldom watch TV or converse, and most of that was during a two-day window. Hospice had made her a totally dependent invalid and killed her weeks sooner than she would have naturally died.

Four, until this experience with hospice, I had always believed that hospice’s objective was to ease the passage to death. I have learned that its objective is not to ease but to hasten death. It practices a covert form of euthanasia.

Five, if I had known before my wife entered the hospice house that hospice would covertly euthanize her, I would have taken her home instead of letting her enter the hospice house. By the time I figured out that she was being covertly euthanized, hospice had debilitated her too much for me to take her home. Hospice had trapped us.

Friday, October 21. My wife has moved to the hospice house. They give my wife zero chances. The cancer has reached the point where chemotherapy will do more harm than good.

[These paragraphs, except the third paragraph, describe my wife at the hospital just before she came to the hospice house.]

Tuesday she ate more than I have seen her eat in days. Wednesday she regressed back to normal. She was so drugged that she sleep much of the day. Thursday was a little better; she sat up some and was more active and awake than Wednesday. Friday was another drugged out sleepy day until about 2 p.m.

Before entering the hospice house my wife could with the aid of a walker get herself out of the bed, walk to the bathroom and take care of her bodily needs, walk back to the bed and get herself back into the bed — all with little or no help. She could feed herself, sit in a chair, watch TV and change channels, bathe herself with a wash cloth, and take care of many of her needs with minimal assistance.

The hospice doctor discussed the bad news with us (both of us knew things were bad; now we have a much better idea of how bad). My wife is weak; I don't know how much is caused by the drugs and how much is caused by not eating enough. Because she has difficulty eating (drinking Ensure), she consumes a little at a time. But the drug stupor that they have her in keeps her from eating. I guess keeping someone in a drugged slumber is what they call pain control.

Although a nutritionist talked with my wife at the hospital several times (expecting to see several hundred dollars on the bill for that consultation), she didn't do much good. They gave my wife some soups that were greasy or tasted like water in which some vegetables had been soaked. No extra vitamins or minerals that I saw other than potassium. The only real nutritional concern that I saw was maintaining the sodium-potassium ratio. With my wife consuming only about half of the RDV, she surely needed supplements. They should have been giving her 5 to 10 times or more RDV for her optimum needs. At least when she had a room in which the sun shined, she was getting her vitamin D. I guess these people buy into the official medical industry policy that vitamins and minerals are mostly irrelevant. The hospice doctor sure does; she claims that nutrition is irrelevant to someone with advance cancer and that healthy food has no beneficial effect (although people have used foods as the primary cure for cancer).

I am glad that she is out of the hospital (and more important, so is she; she is tired of being in the hospital). Most of what they have done, such as feeding her sugar, seems to have made her cancer worse. If they are going to give her sugar, which is hard to avoid as it is almost ubiquitous, they ought to be giving her something like BLA. At least they started giving her a probiotic after I mentioned doing that when they were giving her antibiotics. Hopefully, at the new place, things will improve, and we'll have more freedom and fewer interruptions.

I am beginning to feel like the fellow on the train who was not allowed to blow the whistle, drive the engine, tell the train when to start or stop or where to go, but if anything went wrong, he got the blame.

Friday, October. 21. So far, this place has under impressed me. It is as regimented and institutionalized as the hospital. They even have the bed rigged with an alarm so that you cannot escape. When I left my wife, she was in a drugged stupor. I don't know what kind of drugs they are giving her (the nurse did tell me, but I forgot; it starts with a "d"). Besides making her groggy and sleepy, it causes involuntary muscle movement and slurs her speech.

I have virtually no confidence in most doctors, but the one here hits new lows. She declares nutrition is of no value to people suffering from cancer. Worse, she gives the impression that her objective (job) is to get the patient to the morgue as quickly as possible — apparently by starvation or dehydration as they keep her so drugged she can hardly eat, which she was already having difficulty doing. As they keep her asleep much of the time, she is not awake enough to drink all the liquids that she needs. Did this doctor study under Dr. Death?

The doctor has discontinued her Lovenox shots for blood clots — I guess she plans on my wife dying before blood clots become an issue again. (Can you tell that this is one doctor whom I would avoid especially if I were at death’s door.) As long as no clots form and cause problems, my wife will certainly not miss these shots.

When they were discussing putting my wife in a nursing home, I did some research on nursing homes. When touring a nursing home, several sites recommended observing the patients to see if they were sedated. If many patients were sedated, that was a good indication of a nursing home to avoid. After the interview, the first thing they did was to sedate my wife, and they have kept her sedated.

Moreover, at the hospital, the doctors were working to get my wife off pain medication that were injected and totally on oral medication so that she could eventually go home. The first thing the doctor here did was to take my wife off oral medication and put her on shots. I guess the hospice doctor is not planning on my wife ever going home. She seems to want to send my wife straight to the morgue without passing home.

Saturday, October. 22. When I arrived my wife was in a drugged stupor. At least the aide offered to get her something to eat. She spent nearly all day sleeping — a hospice success story. So, she ate nothing and excepted for a few swallows drank nothing.

When my wife was in the hospital, she could at least walk to the bathroom with the aid of a walker. Now she cannot — they gave her a bedside commode to use. When she was in the hospital, she could hold her cups, etc. without difficulty. Here she has difficulty doing that, and she has been here less than a day. At the hospital she could walk around with a walker and sit in a chair for an hour or two. In less than 24 hours, they have her bed ridden; it takes two aides womanhandling her for her to get any where and all of this in less than 24 hours. Hospice is doing a great job! They will have her in the morgue in no time, which seems to be their primary objective.

They also are using a catheter. At the hospital, she had no problem urinating. Everything for the convenience of the staff I guess. She has not been here 24 hours, and she has deteriorated noticeably. I am beginning to have doubts about hospice.

Before she left the hospital, my wife was drinking 1½ to 2 Ensures and a cup of orange juice and eating a cup or two of yogurt, ice cream or pudding. Hospice has manage to stop her from almost drinking anything in less than 24 hours. If they cannot starve her to death, they will kill her with dehydration and of course blame it all on the cancer. (At the hospital, the staff showed much more concern about my wife eating at least until the hospital/insurance company decided to kick her out.)

They gave her a shower this morning. This is the first shower that she has had since August. After the shower they knocked her out, and she spent the rest of the day asleep.

When I arrived, the social worker gave me a booklet that contained signs of approaching the end. Many of them seem to be drugged related. How much is caused by the drugs and how much by the disease? The day before she left the hospital she showed none of the signs described in the booklet. After less than 24 hours, hospice has gotten her to the point of starting to show some of the signs. I suspect that they are blaming the disease for what the drugs are doing. Are they getting a kick back from the pharmaceutical companies? I am also beginning to suspect that the insurance company pays certain people bonuses under the table to get people to the morgue quickly. This booklet seems to be a cover for their actions.

There are just as many interruptions here as in the hospital. However, the patient is not as aware of them because she is so drugged out.

I was somewhat looking forward to coming to the hospice center if my wife could not come home. I thought it would be better for her. I naively thought that she would at least be as conscious as she was in the hospital — that she would be awake a good deal of the time and aware of what is going on around her. What stupid ignorant thoughts! Most of the time she is either asleep or semiconscious. Now I beginning to believe that she would be better off in a nursing home, even a low quality one. Is the reason that the insurance company rejected the nursing home option because it has a deal with hospice to get patients in the grave as quickly as possible via starvation and dehydration? (It they keep patients so doped up that they cannot eat or drink, they are not going to be around for long.)

My wife left the hospital alive. After 24 hours of hospice care, she is all but dead. They drugged her so much that she slept most of Saturday. They seem to want to hasten her death.

I had the misconception that hospice sought to improve the remaining days of a person’s life. In my distorted way of thinking that includes ensuring that the person is well feed or at least given as much nutritional nourishment as he can tolerate and ensure that he remains hydrated. It also includes remaining alert and aware of what is going on so that the person can spend as much time as possible with relatives and friends. The hospice way seems to be make the patient sleep as much as possible until he dies from starvation or dehydration.

Within 24 hours my opinion of hospice has gone from a highly positive one to a highly negative one. I hope that they can turn things around; I will be happily surprised if they do. These people seemed to be deep into euthanasia. Where is the quality of life when you go for days or weeks unaware of what is going on?

It is hard being in the room with her being unconscious most of the time. I cannot talk with her and cannot do things with or for her. This place restricts partner assistance much more than the hospital. They have her so drugged that two people are needed to do almost anything with her. I was hoping that she would be conscious so that I could converse with her some.

I am exhausted, beaten, defeated and dying along with her — if not physically (and that is probably occurring) at least emotionally, spiritually, and every other way — and am overwhelmed with a sense of loss, defeat, hopelessness, helplessness, uselessness, etc.

I had a lengthy chat with one of the social workers here about various things. She said that the goal is still to get my wife home, hopefully next week unless she takes a turn for the worse. If she goes home, hospice workers would visit the house several time a week to work with my wife.

Sunday, October 23. I woke up around 5 a.m. and found my wife still in a drugged stupor. She was semiconscious, so I gave her a swallow or two of liquid. Whenever I catch her is such a state, I try to give her some liquids to drink.

Since I spent the night with my wife, I slept a little better than I have been. More important, spending the night with her gives me more opportunities to give her water. I had brought about a half dozen bottles of Ensure and Boost foolishly thinking that they would want to try to get her to eat something.

They must have a policy of keeping patients unconscious as much as possible. The drug that they are giving my wife puts her to sleep for about 2 hours. About every 2 hours a nurse will check on her for pain. If my wife is showing too much awareness, she gets another shot to put her out. (My wife is on a schedule such that she gets a shot of pain medication every 4 hours.) Last night when the nurse check on her midway between her scheduled shots, my wife was semiconscious. She said nothing about pain, but the nurse “assumed” that she was in pain and gave her a shot, which put her out. (After my complaints, the doctor changed my wife’s drug regiment to give pain medicine only when she asks for it, so she is awake a little more though not really alert or active when she is awake.)

On Friday, about 3:15 p.m., I left my wife and the hospital and drove to the hospice facility. When I left my wife, she was mobile. Although weak, she could walk around, feed herself, go to the bathroom by herself, sit up, watch TV, etc. Around 4:00 p.m., my wife arrived at the hospice facility in the same condition as she was when she left the hospital. By 6:00 p.m., they injected her with something. Since then, she has been either asleep or semiconscious. She quickly lost her mobility and the ability to feed herself or go to the bathroom. She lost all these capabilities within a few hours of the injection. They are blaming all these losses on the disease. (Some are admitting that the drugs may causing at least some of the stupor.) I find it hard to believe that my wife’s disease would cause such total devastation in a few hours.

My question is: Is it hospice’s official policy or its unofficial policy to keep patients in a drugged stupor so that they cannot eat or drink and by that die from starvation or dehydration while hospice and the medical industry blames the death on the disease. That must be its policy, either officially or unofficially, because that is exactly what it is doing.

Around 7:20 a.m. she regained enough consciousness to drink. One of the aides gave her about a half cup of water. I had given her a few swallows earlier. At least she is finally getting a little liquid.

Just before she left the hospital, my wife could hold my hand with a good grip. Now I have to pick up her hand and all I get is a limp “grasp” with no closure. If I do not hold her hand, it just slides away.

My wife was admitted as a general inpatient for pain management. General inpatients are treated and then sent home. The objective is to get the inpatient out within a week.

After seeing what they do here, I don’t know how her pain could be managed at home. But I do want her home. I, and I believe that she agrees, would much rather her die at home where she has spent more than half her life in a house that she help to build than in some strange institution.

For the most part, the nurses and aides do seem to be caring people who try to make my wife comfortable. When she calls for a nurse, she usually gets a response here quicker than she got at the hospital.

Nausea continues to be a problem. I have seen her vomit more here in 2 days than I saw her do at the hospital in a week. She is getting weaker and weaker — hard to keep one’s strength when one is not eating or exercising. Bowl movements are becoming painful (not from the movement but from the aides struggling to get her on and off the pot and to clean her up afterward), but at least she is not currently constipated. Her bowls are loose. I am not sure what she is excreting because she has not consumed anything to excrete. She deteriorating quicker under hospice care than she was under hospital care.

She has been a little more conscious today than she was Saturday. She has expressed feeling more pain, which is expected because one does not express feeling pain when asleep. It seems as though they would have developed pain medication that could deaden the pain without deadening the patient. It would be nice if she were alert without pain.

As much as I would like to have her home, hospice has debilitated her so much that I am beginning to doubt that she could fare well and that one person could take care of her when things get as rough as they were this morning. She has been having a rough time this morning vomiting and with her bowl movement. She had two and at times three people working with her. This episode begin after they gave her a nausea pill, which she threw up, and a shot of pain medication.

When my wife was in the hospital, she watch a program on animal cruelty in Houston. Some of the people that were charged with animal cruelty were in the little league compared to hospice. Since she has been here, hospice has fed her nothing until late this afternoon when they finally fed her a cup of applesauce and has given her little to drink. Actually, they almost immediately put her in a condition where she could not eat and could only occasionally drink small amounts. If hospice fed and water an animal as little as it does its patients, it would be fined for animal cruelty. What it does to prevent patients from eating and drinking is like caging a dog without food or water. (Based on the comments made by the doctor that interviewed us when we came in, she seems to believe that food and water are irrelevant to extremely sick people.)

I talked with the nurse this afternoon and expressed my concern about my wife dying from starvation or dehydration long before she does from her cancer. She said that they would work with her pain medication to see if they can find a level that will keep the pain under control and at the same time allow my wife to be conscious enough to eat and drink.

The nurse reduced her medication some, so by late afternoon, my wife woke up enough to eat some applesauce. At least we are getting a minute amount of improvement.

They have given her enough laxative to get large messy bowel movements from her. They have her in diapers; even so, she usually messes up the sheets. When she has a bowel movement, the assistance of two people are needed to move her and clean her up. Bowel movements are rough on her. She is much weaker now than she was two days ago when she came in.

Not having much else to do Sunday afternoon other than listen to my wife snore, I posted negative comments about hospice in general and this hospice house in particular on several web sites and gave this hospice house a one star rating on sites that had a rating system. The message was as follows although for some sites I had to modify it slightly:

When my wife enter a hospice facility for pain management, she could converse, walk short distances with a walker, bathe herself with a wash cloth, fed herself, sit up, watch TV, etc. With a little help, she could take care of her basic needs. A few hours after entering a hospice facility, hospice managed to turn her into a bedridden zombie that can no longer do any of these things. Since she has been here, hospice has feed her nothing and has given her little to drink. Actually, they almost immediately put her in a condition where she could not eat and could only occasionally drink small amounts. Of coarse they blame this rapid, almost instantaneous, decline on her disease. I have become convinced that the policy of hospice is to kill its patient as quickly as possible by starvation or dehydration and blame the death on the disease. If hospice feed and water an animal as little as it does its patients, it would be fined for animal cruelty. Is hospice getting a payoff from the insurance companies to get the patient to the morgue as quickly as possible? Don’t let hospice get its hands on anyone you love — especially at one of its facilities.

Monday, October. 24. My wife was somewhat conscious when I arrived this morning about 9:30 a.m. I gave her a little to drink. She can hardly talk. I brought her i-pad and played her the music that she has on it through my radio so she can listen to it. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring her battery charger, and the battery gave out before I finished playing all her tunes.

I use to think that hospice sought to maintain the patient’s dignity and as much quality of life that the patient had as long as possible. Now I believe that hospice does not care much about the patient’s dignity or quality of life, but seeks to get the patient in the morgue as soon as possible. (Not unsurprisingly, the doctor and social worker strongly disagreed with my assessment.)

My wife is now using a bed pan. That is easier on her than using the bedside commode.

I talked with the chaplain and social worker today and expressed my concerns and disappointment in the hospice facility. I doubt they will do much. The social worker mentioned moving her somewhere else. I don’t know where else to go. She might could go back to the hospital. However, most likely, the hospital would soon declare that she was ready for discharge; then where would she go? She could go to a nursing home, but it probably would keep her drugged up like here and probably is not as good at pain control as this place. Hospice has her in such shape now, I cannot take her home. She is too weak for one person to manage. (Last Friday, I probably could have managed her alone as she was able with a little assistance take care of bodily needs herself.) Hospice recommends three full-time care givers at home, each working an 8-hour shift.

The chaplain asked how I was coping and what I was doing to help me through this ordeal. I told him that I was recording my observations, feelings, etc. and sending them out to relatives and friends. I find that it helps me with my frustrations and anguish.

I talked with attending facility physician. According to her, a person failing to eat anything in the late stages of cancer do not undergo starvation. The cancer just draws all the nutrition from the body. The body cannot not be supplied enough food or liquid to keep the body living. I must be a victim of jargon because to my ignorant mind, starvation is the body not getting enough food to survive. What the doctor described was the body not getting enough food to survive. Besides, not giving the patient food from which the cancer can steal nutrition makes it steal nutrition faster from the body.

The doctor tried, but failed to do so, convince me that the cancer has caused my wife to go from an alert person who could take care of her basic needs with a little help to a bed ridden zombie in a matter of hours. Nothing that they did caused this dramatic change. As I suspected and expected, the cancer would be the blame.

The doctor claims that my wife is in the state that she is because she has given up the will to live. In the doctor’s mind, the doctor is completely innocent of any of my wife’s problem.

This doctor seems unable to hit a happy mean or optimum amount of pain medication. She goes from too much, thus keeping my wife unconscious or semiconscious most of the time to too little (to spite me?).

This doctor acts like I am a medical expert. Unfortunately, there is much friction between her and me. She doesn't think much of me, and she senses that I do not think much of her, and I don’t. For my wife's sake, I have refrained from telling her how I really feel about her other than telling her I am dissatisfied with the treatment. (I am afraid if she really knew, she would take it out on my wife.) She keeps asking what I want to do. I keep telling that I want my wife to have maximum alertness and mobility with minimum pain. Although she is supposed to be the expert, she seems to expect me to tell her what to do.

She developed a low opinion of me when I said that my wife was being put out to pasture. She apparently took my comment to mean that my wife was coming here to be euthanized. I did not mean that although it does seem that they are in a hurry to get her to the morgue the way hospice so quickly debilitated her. I meant that she was being sent here to die, and hospice has not refuted that. I developed a low opinion of her when she said that nutrition had no value to cancer patients.

To use a computer analogy, I have a broken computer and take to the professional repairman. I may not know how to fix the broken computer, but I know when the repairman has not fixed it.

According to the nurse, the facility can prepare meals onsite. They have not brought my wife any prepared food, but then she could not eat it even if they did. However, an aide did feed her a cup of applesauce and a small carton of apple juice, which must have been better than that at the hospital, which tasted like it was watered down.

Now that my wife is approaching the end, the medical industry wants to shift all the decisions to me on the treatments to use. I guess that they want to free themselves from any blame and shift all the blame to me for whatever happens. (Of coarse, if by some miracle, things change for the better, they will take the credit.) This is the first time a doctor wanted my say in anything. I don’t even think that they really asked my wife what she wanted. If any discussion of options were presented, and I am not sure that it was, my impression is that it was the doctor’s chosen way or no way. It has been mostly the doctors telling my wife what they were going to do, and she went along for the ride.

They did not give my wife any nausea medicine today, and she did not vomit. She has not vomited since they stop giving her nausea pills. They are now giving her pain medication when she is in pain.

I spent Monday night with my wife.

P.S. 1. She seems to have done a little better today. Her most trying times today have been bowel movements — the moving around and cleaning up shakes her up a lot and often causes much pain. I had a discussion with the chaplain, social worker, and doctor about what has disturbed me so much here. Not unsurprisingly, the doctor is completely innocent. The problem lies with my wife and her disease; that is what caused her almost instantaneous deterioration from an alert, mobile person to a bed-ridden zombie, who can hardly talk.

P.S. 2. The doctor and social worker said if I were dissatisfied they could send my wife somewhere else. But where? To the hospital? It would soon discharge her again, and then where would she go? To a skilled nursing home? With the shape that hospice has gotten my wife, the nursing home would most likely keep her a drugged up bed-ridden zombie and the insurance would not cover it. I cannot take her home. Hospice has her in such shape that I could not manage her. I probably could have handled her if we had gone home Friday instead of coming here. If we had gone home, I am convince that today she would be doing as well as she was when she left the hospital. I don't know about the pain; it probably would have been no worse than at the hospital. Hospice has her so knocked out that she doesn't seem to feel much although she occasionally gets a sharp pain. I feel like I am caught between "the rock and the hard place": Damned if I do and damned if I don't.

P.S. 3 Here is a message that I sent to a radio program:

Please warn your audience about the dangers of going to a hospice facility. When my wife enter a hospice facility for pain management, she could converse, walk short distances with a walker, bathe herself with a wash cloth, feed herself, sit up, watch TV, etc. With a little help, she could take care of her basic needs. A few hours after entering a hospice facility, hospice managed to turn her into a bedridden zombie that can no longer do any of these things. Since she has been here, hospice has fed her almost nothing and has given her little to drink. Actually, they almost immediately put her in a condition where she could not eat and could only occasionally drink small amounts. I use to think that hospice sought to maintain the patient’s dignity and as much quality of life that the patient had as long as possible. Now I believe that hospice does not care much about the patient’s dignity or quality of life, but seeks to get the patient in the morgue as soon as possible. I have become convinced that the policy of hospice is to kill the patient as quickly as possible by starvation or dehydration and blame the death on the disease.

I have no compliant about the nurses or aides here. As you know, nurses are a higher caliber of people than doctors. I have little confidence in doctors, but when the doctor here said that nutrition did not matter to cancer patients that hit an unbelievable low.

P.S. 4. I lost both my parents to cancer, so I have seen how people decline with the disease. I have never seen one go from being alert and capable of taking care of his basic needs with minimal help to a bed ridden zombie in a few hours.

Tuesday October. 25. Last night was not a smooth night for my wife. She woke up about 1 a.m. thirsty and in pain. She woke me up around 5 a.m. moaning, but said she did not need any pain medicine, just water. They have weakened her so much, she is having difficulty communicating. My wife seemed to have lost her sense of reality — what is going on and why. This morning she wanted to pull the catheter out. It seems like whenever she has the urge to potty, she soon has a sharp pain attack.

Afterwards, she became more alert than she has been since she has been here. Her speech improved. She has been able to tell us more clearly what she needs. She can more clearly tell us if she needs pain medicine. If the doctor stays out of the way, maybe we will find a regiment that keeps her comfortable and alert. (Can you tell that I would not trust this doctor to remove a splinter.) She complains more about being thirsty than the pain. The aides and I have been giving her liquids to drink. She doesn't seem to have trouble drinking, but she cannot drink too much at a time. It is sad to see her becoming dependent like a baby.

My parable. You want to build a bridge. You get an engineer and tell him that you want a bridge to go from here to there and to carry so many vehicles. You wanted it built with minimal cost. Then the engineer, presumably the expert, asks you how much steel you want to use. That seems to be what the doctor, presumably the expert, has done. I told her that I want my wife as alert and mobile as possible with the least amount of pain. The doctor asks me how much pain medication I wanted to give her. How would I know. She is suppose to be the expert; she should figure that out.

Anyway, the doctor reduced the dosage, and my wife is given pain medication only when needed instead of all the time as earlier. (I wonder if she has put my wife on minimum medication because she figured that it would not be enough and she is using my wife’s pain to get at me.) In any case, the current regime seems to be working for now.

It seems like now I must give approval for each shot of pain medication that my wife gets. Or at least the nurses check with me before giving her a pain shot to see if I object. Looks like the doctor has put me in charge of my wife’s pain management. I guess that I am now an expert on pain management. I don’t know what they will do on the nights that I am not here. At least the nurses and I are beginning to figure out when she needs pain medication.

The 9-11 truthers have a saying: Are you going to believe the U.S. government’s official conspiracy theory about 9-11 or are you going to believe your own lying eyes? Hospice has taken a similar stand: Are you going to believe hospice’s explanation that my wife’s almost instantaneous deterioration from an alert, mobile person into a bed-ridden zombie was all her and hospice, especially the physician in charge, had nothing to do with it or are you going to believe your own lying eyes? I for one believe my own lying eyes.

Since Sunday, they have been bathing my wife in the bed with a washcloth. They have to change her sheets while she is in the bed. It is amazing how fast hospice can bring someone down.

The doctor said that my wife’s knee was cool. According to her, the cool knee could be a sign that the end is near or it could be a random event. They will be checking for coolness for several days.

Tomorrow, I am scheduled to talk to a bigwig in administration about my complaint.

Wednesday, October 26. The nurse gave my wife two shots of pain killer last night after midnight. During the first one, my wife was able to carry on a simple conversation with the aide. When I got up, she was thirsty, so I gave her some water. The nurse checked her shortly thereafter and gave her a pain shot.

Fortunately, my wife moves around a good deal in her bed. Unfortunately, she works herself toward the foot of the bed; they have to pull her up from time to time. Last Friday, she was able to pull herself up. Now two people are needed to pull her up.

My wife has been sleeping more today than yesterday. However, she was awake enough in the afternoon to watch some TV; this the first time she has watched any TV since she has been here. She has been thirsty today. Since midnight she has drank little more than a can of Pepsi and more than 3 cups of water. They certainly have dehydrated her.

Some of the people here prefer moistening the mouth by swabbing it instead of giving something to drink. I wonder how long patients who have no one with them can go without water. Well, according to some here, a person with advance cancer can go weeks without water. Apparently, people with cancer do not need water.

They do not feed patients here. Apparently, hospice’s motto is that food does no good, so why give it. So far, only one aide has offered my wife anything to eat and has feed her anything. I asked her did she want anything to eat this morning, and she said no. I did feed her a little pudding this afternoon. They should be offering patients food, and let the patient decide if he wants anything to eat. But then, most of them are probably in such a drugged stupor as my wife was a few days ago and cannot answer and cannot eat even if they wanted to because they are so drugged out.

The way hospice has treated my wife since she has been here has taken days if not weeks off her life. I am still convinced that hospice wants to get its patients to the morgue as quickly as possible.

I don't believe that hospice is in the euthanasia business in the sense that they deliberately poison people — if one assumes that the medication that it gives is not poison. However, it is in the sense of withholding food and water. Instead of practicing overt euthanasia as Kevorkian advocated, it practices covert euthanasia

The doctor here seems to be of the Kevorkian school. (I wonder if she was one of his students.) She seems to looks forward to someone dying.

Hospice gave me a booklet that describes the symptoms that appear as a patient approaches death. I could achieve the same symptoms in a healthy person if I put him in a drugged stupor and did not give him anything to eat or drink.

One reason that I wanted my wife consciousness was so that she could tell us if she needed pain medicine, food, or water. She knows better than anyone else whether she is hurting, thirsty, or hungry. The hospital had gotten her trained to call for pain killer when she started to feel uncomfortable pain. She had gotten pretty good at doing that. At the hospital, she could call for a nurse if she needed pain medication. Here, because hospice immediately made an invalid of her, she cannot. Someone must be with her to find out if she needs any. As she is now able to communicate orally, when she starts making sounds or movements like her pain is beginning to rise, the nurse or I can ask her if she needs pain medication. Some times she does, but at other times it is because she is thirsty. More often than not thirst is the reason. At times she has gone four hours or more without any pain medication and maintained her comfort level. At other times she needs a shot two hours after the last one. The frequency at which she needs pain medicine varies. We do know that when she starts to feel the urge to potty, she most likely needs pain medication. When the nurse and aide bathe her or change the sheets, activities that will cause her to be moved a lot, she should get pain medication before the activity.

P.S. 1. Here is a message that I sent to people warning them about hospice:

Some of you know, but most of you may not. Last Friday afternoon about 4:00, my wife was placed in a hospice facility. Based on my experience since then, I strongly urge you not to allow a love one to go to a hospice facility if at all possible. Here is my commentary:

When my wife enter a hospice facility for pain management, she could converse, walk short distances with a walker, bathe herself with a wash cloth, feed herself, sit up, watch TV, sit in a chair, look at a newspaper, etc. With a little help, she could take care of her basic needs. A few hours after entering the hospice facility, hospice managed to turn her into a bedridden zombie that can no longer do any of these things. Since she has been here, hospice has fed her almost nothing and has given her little to drink. Actually, they almost immediately put her in a condition where she could not eat and could only occasionally drink small amounts. Of course they blame this rapid, almost instantaneous, decline on her. Hospice claimed that it was completely innocent of this immediate decline. After I complained, hospice reduced the medication, so now my wife can tell someone that she is thirsty, hungry, or in pain. Unfortunately, hospice had weaken her so much that she remains an invalid. Hospice’s policy seems to be to get the patient to the morgue as quickly as possible. It seems to be practicing a form of covert euthanasia. I am convinced that hospice has taken days if not weeks off my wife's life. Don’t let hospice get its hands on anyone you love — especially at one of its facilities.

P.S. 2. I don't believe that hospice is in the euthanasia business in the sense that they deliberately poison people — if one assumes that the medication that it gives is not poison. However, it is in the sense of letting patients go without food and water.

Thursday, October 27. When I arrived this morning, my wife was awake with eyes open. However, she did not look as good as she did when I left her Wednesday. I learned that she had had a shower. Such movement wears her out. She can now grip my hand. For the first time since last Friday, she can hold a cup. She held a cup of orange juice as she drank it. She also turned the TV on for the first time and changed the channel. Moreover, she was able to feed herself some ice cream. As this is the first time she has eaten anything other than some applesauce, she has been eating too much. She is trying to do more things for herself, but is too weak to do much. Stopping them from keeping in a drugged stupor seems to have helped her. She may feel a little bit more pain, but she is having a higher quality of life.

One of my wife’s friends, who is a nurse, visited her Tuesday. The friend was surprised that my wife did not have an IV. I ask the hospice honcho about the lack of an IV. He said that hospice seldom uses IVs because they may cause compilations, such as fluid in the lungs, in the last days. So, hospice does not use IVs even when the benefit out weighs the risk because some time in the future, the risk may out weigh the benefit. I consider this response more evidence that supports hospice hastening death with dehydration. I followed Mark Twain’s advice, “Do not argue with an idiot they drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.” Thus, I did not pursue the IV issue. Not wanting him to beat me with experience, I avoided argument and confrontation with him about anything. I just expressed some of my concerns and observation.

My comment to him about offering patients something to eat may have gotten some return. Today, an aide has asked my wife several times if she wanted something to eat. For the first time since Friday, she drank some Ensure.

Based on my observations and comments that some of the people, not the nurses or aides, have made around here, I have come to the conclusion that hospice’s mission is not so much to ease the passage as it is to hasten the passage. It is essentially practicing covert euthanasia.

My opinion of hospice has turned 180 degrees. I had always thought that its mission was to ease the passage to the other side. I have come to learn that it is to hasten it. Its concept of easing the passage is to drug the patient into a zombie so that he does not know what is going on. To make the trip to the morgue more quickly, it withholds food and water unless the drugged zombie, who can hardly talk at all, asks for some. Hospice seems to treat everyone as though he has only days left to live although he may have weeks or months.

I feel as though I am deep behind enemy lines defending my severely injured companion and trying to keep her alive. Although not enough, I find myself fighting harder for her than I ever would for myself.

The aide worked with my wife to get my wife to pull herself to her side.

The nurse and I discussed my wife’s pain medication. Considering the frequency that my wife is receiving pain shots, we decided to go back to a shot every four hours with break through shot whenever needed — the doctor approved this change. This should smooth out the pain and reduce the shots. Hopefully, it will not make her a zombie as she was earlier this week. According to the doctor and nurse, she should receive less medication if no pain break through shots are given.

Their favorite excuse for my wife’s sudden collapse is that she finally got a chance to relax and sleep away from the bustle of the hospital and its interruptions. (Her interruptions were cut significantly in the last week after the hospital disconnected the IV.) However, here they were given her a shot every four hours. So the nightly interruptions were just as frequent. During the day, the interruptions are about the same albeit for different reasons. Moreover, she never displayed such a collapse when she came home from the hospital before. Home has a much more relaxed atmosphere than the hospice house.

For the first time in several days, my wife was able to use a bedside commode. She finds that better than a bed pan.

Dilaudid is the pain medicine that they are using on my wife.

I am spending tonight and tomorrow night with my wife.

Last week

Copyright © 2011 by Thomas Coley Allen. 

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