How many patients are drugged to death in hospice?

Hospicesucks,
Do you wait until your head feels like it's going to explode before you take an aspirin or Tylenol for headache? Probably not (or at least I hope not!)

If you had menstrual cramps, would you wait until you were doubled over in pain before popping a pill that would reduce your cramping? Again, I think you would get to a moderately uncomfortable level and then get yourself something to relieve it.

I don't think you understand the "dynamics" of pain.
As mentioned above, you want to "catch" the pain in the mild to moderate stage so the pain medication PREVENTS the pain from getting real bad, out of control or as you said "lots of pain".

If you wait until you HAVE lots of pain (or severe pain), the pain medication is not as effective because it has to work harder to bring the level down to a tolerable point.

Actually, you would be doing yourself (or anyone) a favor by "catching" the pain at a mild to moderate point to get the maximum effect of pain relief from the medicine.

Pain level is now part of the vital signs assessment. Many doctors now say to take pain relievers at the first sign of pain (for better pain control).

Are you aware that everyone reacts differently to pain?
Some close their eyes, some make fists and tense up muscles, some frown and grit their teeth, some rock back and forth, some moan (that's not the whole list, just examples).
Many don't want to admit (especially around their loved ones), that they are in pain. It could be a sign of weakness or they don't want their family to know because they would feel bad). Many cultures don't complain (of pain or anything else) so the diligent nurse needs to find other ways to assess pain.

I hope this explanation helps put things in perspective as to why dying people in pain are medicated earlier rather than later.

Dear Ashley
I am so sorry for your distress of the way your husband died.
I actually have no experience of Revlimid so had to look it up. The side effects are absolutely horrendous.
There is little I can add that others have not said..
Make sure you have your entire copies of your husbands records and include the nursing notes, copies of blood tests and x-rays, CT scans etc. You are entitled to them free but you need to remember to specifically ask for some things.
There may have been negligence, or malpractice and the ER doc could have mixed his patients up when he wrote his note. ER is a very busy and exhausting place and after many long hours it is easy to get confused especially if you are so busy you can't imediately write the notes. Actual murder, what would be the point of that?
The fact that a Dr is trained in another country does not make them incompetent, ignorant or likey to practice negligent medicine. Any foreign trained MD is required to perform a specified time, I think 2 years as a resident and take similar licensing exams as a US trained Dr
Sometimes helping the patient pass over may seem the only way forward as in the case of the nurse during hurricane Katrina who was not able to evacuate bedbound patients and saved them from the horror of drowning in their beds. that nurse was charged with murder for her compassion.
If you do proceed with a lawsuit be aware that the financial award may not be huge because your husband did have a potentially deadly disease so although his life is very valuable to you others will simply consider the amount he would have been capable of providing for his family. Do you actually want to put yourself through this kind of stress? It won't bring your husband back sad as that may be.
You are still in great deal of pain from your loss so try and let your grief run it's course possibly with professional councilling or by joining a grief group. Often sharing experiences can be very helpful and provide some answers. Blessings, this is a very hard time for you.

#mylovedonetoo

Ashley, this is very widespread. You should look up "Lucy Karen Clay". Her story is very similar to yours. She recently did a radio interview on, "Exposing Medical Predators with Carly Walden".

Carly is a board member of the Hospice Patients Alliance. Her show airs live every Tuesday at 8pm EST.

The Hospice Patients Alliance is a patient advocate organization and an invaluable resource. There are hundreds of stories like yours on their website. The book, "Stealth Euthanasia; Health Care Tyranny in America" is free to read there.

Ashley,
I’m sorry for your loss and terrible grief.
Your story is very complicated and confusing so I know how frustrating it must be.
Are you aware that some of the answers your getting are really challenging your thinking about this event. It sounds to me ( a retired RN of over 40 years) that the whole treatment you described would be malpractice and maybe criminal.
Who was your husband that an entire medical team conspired to murder him.?
My nursing career was in psychiatric/mental health nursing.
Many times I’ve seen patients so overwhelmed by grief that their thinking gets confused, and because of their suffering they start trying to put things together that makes sense to them, but not others.
A lot of people get angry if someone suggests that they may have some mental health problems. But these symptoms are just from your brain being overwhelmed by grief and depression.
The brain is just another organ in your body and it can get ill from stress just like any other part of your body.
And because of that it can be treated just like any other organ that is not working just right.
The job of the brain is complicated. But it takes in information and tries to make sense of the thinking. So if your brain is not working right then it can not think clearly.
I know this is hard to hear, specially from a stanger, but I think you are truly suffering.
Maybe you could talk to your doctor to get an evaluation from someone you trust. Or ask for a referal to a counselor so you can talk about your loss, and pain. There are many good medications now that treat anxiety and depression with few if any side effects, and they are NOT related to opiates, and are not addictive.
I wish you comfort and peace of mind.

Ashley,
You sound like you are on top of it.
Get the lawyer and make them give you the info.
I'm sorry you have to fight for this in your time of grief.

Ashley, you mentioned your husband was alert when he entered the hospital, thus he could have signed off on the paperwork for DNR and for Hospice. My gut feeling here is that your husband knew what were his health issues and he wanted to protect you from the results found. This is not uncommon.

Do you mind answering what was the cause of death via the Death Certificate? I am so sorry for your lost, and this this continuing search for answers.

I have a feeling that your husband may have died from complications of pneumonia.... one doesn't need a chest x-ray to see if a patient has pneumonia, the lab can pin point pneumonia from a blood test and that blood test can tell what germ is causing the infection. Blood tests, such as a complete blood count (CBC) can also see if his immune system is actively fighting the infection. Maybe it wasn't.

As for no liquids given to your husband, that is because the organs were shutting down. If liquids were given, it would sit in the stomach and in the kidneys, which would be quite painful. Same with food, the food would just sit in the stomach. Most men won't say they are in pain to a love one, they wait until the family member has left the room.

When we are in the hospital with a love one, it is so easy to be a deer in headlights. Information is thrown at us from every direction, and it is simple to miss out on hearing important information. We hear and remember as much as we can. That happened to me when my Dad had aspiration pneumonia, sadly there wasn't anything more the doctors could do. All food and liquids were going into his lungs.  He had passed a few days later. 

I hope you find the answers you want.

He was listed as full code for the first day and a half. Then in the middle of the night a nurse changed him to DNR and then two hours later the hospitalist signed off on it. I would never have agreed to making a DNR without discussing it with his primary care doctor and his children especially after his oncologist had just told me "I see nothing fatal here". The hospitalist three years out of medical school and the Dominican republic, would not transfer him to another hospital. As for the three minutes I was talking to a friend on the phone as I was leaving the hospital and hung up when I got on the elevator which was at 2:03 which I can prove  from my phone bill. And the medical records state after 11 hours off because I refused,they resumed giving him fentanyl and lorazepam at 2:06.

Sue, I appreciate all your comments. He did have multiple myeloma for six months And was in complete remission. The primary care doctor is the one that told me to see a lawyer. They diagnosed sepsis before they had any cultures back and all blood and urine cultures were negative. Not one chest x-ray or CAT scan says pneumonia and they did multiple ones. They said he had respiratory failure but his oxygen on room air was 100 percent and his carbon dioxide was low. There are lots of people that have cancer that are not in any stage of dying. They repeatedly kept referring to his altered medication which wasn't true. The ambulance, the doctor in the emergency room that actually treated him, the nurse that was with him for three hours before he was admitted, and every single one of the lab people say he was alert and oriented times three actively involved in conversation. But the hospitalist that did the admission report, who I never spoke to,just made up his own story.  It was a Saturday morning shift change and I think he just wanted out of there. I know there were three people brought in at the same time because the ambulance came from another town andthey  told us that's why they were there instead of on the right  down our street. Ironically the hospital records are my best evidence.  But I think this is how they get away with it because when it happens people don't believe that that could go on In a hospital. Of course I was hoping  I talk to the PCP that he would tell me he was dying anyway. But he didn't he told me to see a lawyer.  He was also full code when admitted in the emergency room and never had a DNR order. 

Ashley,
My condolences on the passing of your husband. You must be heartbroken. God's peace to you.

Your husband was a very sick man as evidenced by his taking Revlimid. This drug promotes an immune response to slow tumor growth. Its used to treat bone marrow cancer, anemia in patients with
myeloplastic syndrome and lymphoma. Both the patient and the doctor must be registered in a special program to use this drug and the patient signs a paper that outlines all the potential side effects of the medicine (many).

Sepsis is diagnosed by blood tests, pneumonia by XRay &/or broncoscopy and respiratory failure by blood gasses.
These results would be available in his chart.

"The hospital made him a DNR and hospice comfort only care without authorization from anyone." Did he have a DNR form on file that he had signed at an earlier date. It's called an Advance Directive. Legally neither the hospital nor the doctors can make him a DNR without his consent (or yours if he can't speak for himself). Check for a previous Advance Directive in his chart. (It could have been many years old.)

I'm wondering, since he was so sick, why bring him home, only to transfer him soon to another hospital? Wouldn't a direct hospital to hospital transfer have been easier (especially on him)?

I'm also curious as to how you found out that he was medicated 3 minutes after you left? Is that in the notes (medication sheet)?

I'm assuming your husband had one type of cancer mentioned above. It wouldn't be too surprising that it had metasticized and spread into his blood. Had all the final reports been put in his chart when you examined it?

Hospitals and doctors are in the business of saving lives, not extinguishing them. You can disagree with the treatment but then have to be responsible for the outcome. Did your husband disagree with his treatment too?

Have you had his primary cancer doctor explain your husband's illness to you in detail with the chart present? If all these things were happening (Lasix, etc.) that you didn't agree with, did you question the doctors right there? If so, and you still disagreed, was it your husband who agreed to the treatment?

I'm sure your husband was once an extremely active man. But his disease ravaged his body, so much so that the doctors felt his death was near and suggested hospice. Did hospice talk with you and did you sign the hospice papers?

What I'm trying to get at here is; Were you an active participant in your husbands care with full knowledge about how far the disease had spread?

I hope you revisit your husbands records with the doctors on his case and have them explain every step to you. I hope you will be at peace after that.

Rest in the fact that your husband is once again an extremely active and disease free man now who still loves his family and now has a new eternal life.
Again, I'm sorry for your loss.

So you think the Dr. who suspect sepsis, etc, planned the whole thing? I assume he was very senior to get the rest of the staff, especially those in other departments to help him.

Everyone said he was alert and oriented to person place and time except for one doctor in the emergency room who did the admission report. For some reason that doctor said he had sepsis, pneumonia, and respiratory failure with altered mentation. I think it was decided then and there that he was a senile old man,  and they were just going to make him die sooner rather than later. And that's exactly what they did. In reading these reports you can't believe that they're talking about the same patient.  There was no bone marrow biopsy done, just at the blood test showing elevated white blood count which of course he would have after being given Lasix twice in four days when he was already dehydrated. His free water deficit was 3.54 liters. 

This is getting very weird. It takes 2-3 weeks for the lab results to come back; I wonder what the ER docs were working with? What did the bone marrow show? I can't believe the series of errors that we made if the whole hospital wasn't colluding. 

He had multiple myeloma that was in remission. His oncologist was in to see him the day before the hospitalist told me he had leukemia. His oncologist told the PCP and me "I see nothing fatal here." I was just so shocked when he arrived him unconscious and then the hospice nurse told me he wasn't going to make it through the night, it never went through my mind that they started drugging him again. I only found out that they had made him DNR, and comfort only measures after he died.  He died last February and I've spent thousands of hours going through these records, but every time I look at them I find something else. 

Also, I think conspiracy to murder. How ever did they "put him" on DNR with out his permission or that of the POA? I'm also curious as to why he had an oncologist, as you state there was no diagnosis leukemia. And who to you think benefited from his death? Motive is such an important consideration. It's amazing how many of these cases there are. I wouldn't find it believable in a work of fiction. I wonder who is actually behind it? Perhaps the Flat Earth Society. They seem to be so busy these days. And I wonder who manage to get the education on opioids etc. removed from the medical and nursing curricula? Someone with a great deal of power is behind this? Maybe aliens?

I will, I have to make something good come out of this from my husband's sake.  It's extra tough waking up every morning and going to sleep every night knowing that he should still be here but for the actions at the hospital. So I think one thing I can do is warn people to be aware.  I thought I was on top of things, and I never left the hospital for a minute. 

Be sure and let us know how this turns out

Thanks! The attorneys are reviewing the medical records now. Caregivers need to be educated on this overdrugging with opioids, and therefore hastening death, especially when the patient does not have any pain or not in any stage of dying.

"This was not a mistake this was deliberate."

Deliberately causing someone's death is called murder. If the hospital did all the things that you allege, you should contact the police for criminal prosecution and hire an attorney for a multimillion dollar lawsuit.