Those of you who know me know that my mom died on Friday night. She had an inoperable, aggressive, non-small cell lung cancer. She was able to die peacefully in her home because of hospice care that was covered under Medicare. I cannot thank the hospice nurse enough. Without her, my mom would have been in terrible pain and my dad and I helpless to help her. Without Medicare coverage, my dad would have lost his home and financial security at the same time he lost his wife of 54 years.
For those who still go around claiming that palliative care education and doctors appointments for advice on health care directives create "death panels" or simply take advantage of those lies for the benefit of their political career like my dirt bag congressman and senator wannabe Mark Kirk, know that there is nothing smart or holy about cancer. It's messy and brings unbearable pain. There is nothing sacred about making someone go through the pain of cancer, and while it may be politically expedient during our time of tea party health care ignorance, supporting that, or turning a blind eye to the lies, does not make one fit to lead a community or country.
As all good health care ideas, hospice comes from England. The first formal hospice was created in the 1960s by Dame Cicely Saunders at St. Christopher's Hospice in London. Florence Ward, Dean of the Yale School of Nursing, brought Saunders to the United States to teach and the idea gained momentum in this country after publication of the book On Death and Dying, by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Kubler-Ross testified on death with dignity before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging in 1972.
The American Cancer Society describes hospice here. The parts of hospice care that are directly useful for all health care include the team work approach, use of various medical professionals and direct communication with patients and their families. Hospice care brings together doctors, physician assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners, creates a system of communications among them and brings the right care at the right time by the right professional to the patient. The patient doesn't have to figure out who to call or what to ask as the team does that for him or her. The patient does not lack care for want of the constant expensive attention of a full M.D., but can consult with the various para-professionals who know when, how and to whom to escalate matters. In addition, all needed equipment and medicines are included and brought to your door without another third party provider with its hand out becoming involved.
During my mom's illness, I never saw the type of team work and communication we needed for her before she went on hospice. Before hospice, when she was first being diagnosed, we found that the primary care physician and surgeon did little to help my mom overall and nothing to work with each other. There were no para-professionals in the mix. I'll never forget being in the hospital with her during a test this past fall, telling the surgeon who performed the test that my mom needed help in the interim before the results were in, and having him stare at me like I was crazy. Why would he do anything before the test results were in? We were supposed to wait for the test results and call for another appointment. The whole thing probably would have taken about a week, if we were lucky enough to get a quick appointment.
As the doctor walked away from me in the surgical waiting room, I wondered if he even looked at her and saw how weak she was or the distress she was in. Because he did nothing for her immediate needs and sent her home after the test, I ended up having to call 911 so she could be brought to the emergency room. Because my mom's doctor was from her old neighborhood, we had to switch doctors and hospital affiliations when she was brought to the ER of the local hospital of her current neighborhood. So, now we're talking about a 911 call, ambulance transporation and emergency room treatment when she already had been in the hospital under the care of two doctors (one primary care physician and one surgeon) both of whom knew or should have known she couldn't sit at home and wait the days to get test results back and analyzed and a new appointment. We're also talking about two sets of doctors at two separate hospitals reviewing her record and test results. The lack of teamwork and patient focused care was not just painful for my mother, it was very expensive and wasteful.
So far, health care reform has focused on how to enrich the health insurance industry, an industry that adds nothing to the reform of our heath care system. We're being told by our bought off congress and their fake grassroots organizations that we have to pay the protection money to the insurance industry or they'll make things even worse for us when what we should be doing is bringing all of our health resources together in teams mirroring hospice teams and putting the whole thing under the blanket of Medicare to pay for it.
Obama is supposed to release his final health care plan just moments from now. It's expected to be a piecemeal approach to create minor regulation to curb insurance industry abuses. This is nuts. More politics when we need better care. So for all of the big talk and pseudo-religious chest thumping we do about right-to-life in this country, it's actually easier to die in this country than to get the care to help us live.