HOSPICE: WHAT A WAY TO GO!

I'm learning to become a Hospice volunteer, and the more I learn about it, the more I'm itching to get out there and get my hands dirty.  The most important thing to know is that they want to help others die with dignity, peace and comfort..... preferably in their own homes, surrounded by the things and the people they love. BOTH the patient AND the family are surrounded with a caring team. The goal is no longer one of cure, but of comfort care. One writer explains, "hospice is a movement, not a place and helps people LIVE while they are dying.  It bathes their wasting bodies, combs their thinning hair, loves them unreservedly, diminishes their pain, sees to their joy and improves their ending lives as if to do so were an honor rather than a chore."  Hospice treats patients as people, not as diseases. I also love this:  "Hospice workers think that the top sheets and bottom sheets should match, even if the patient can no longer see; hospice workers explain the purpose of every shot and suppository, even if the patient can no longer hear; hospice workers don't offer false hope to a patient, nor do they say, 'Eat, you have to eat or you won't get better.'  Lastly, this is a wonderful testimonial from a patient:  "I went to the hospital to be cured and I almost died.  I went to the hospice to die and I lived."  To die with dignity and with as much choice as we can render- isn't that how we would all like our final exits to be?
All quotes are taken from the book, IMPERFECT CONTROL by Judith Viorst.