When you first hear about hospice care as a potential treatment option for your family member, you might worry that she’s thinking about giving up. While that’s a common belief, it’s not necessarily an accurate one. Hospice for your aging family member can be way more about using the time that she has left to its best advantage.
Hospice Care Isn’t Curative
Because your senior’s medical team is still greatly involved in her overall care, you might think that hospice care is another type of curative treatment. It really isn’t, though. Hospice services are more about helping your family member to be comfortable in the time that she has left. She may, in fact, choose hospice as a care option specifically because she’s exhausted by curative therapies.
Energy Gets Directed Elsewhere
Often people who enter into hospice services find that they have time and energy to put into other areas of their life now. Your family member may be more able and willing to deal with sorting out some unfinished decisions or repairing relationships that have been suffering. Because she’s not spending as much time trying to cure her illness, she’s able to focus that effort elsewhere.
Your Family Member Has Been through a Lot
Chances are probably pretty good that your family member has already been through quite a lot in terms of treatments and therapies. This is especially the case with conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and other chronic health conditions that inevitably become worse over time. In many of those cases, the treatment for the health issues can be burdensome, such as chemotherapy treatments that leave your family member feeling drained.
Hospice Can Be about Embracing Life
With all of that in mind, hospice treatments can give your family member a little bit more room in which to breathe. This can give her the room she needs to embrace what is left of her life. Everything becomes about how to give your family member the best possible quality of life rather than trying to prolong her life with treatments that she no longer wants.
Ultimately, you and your family member need to work with her medical team to determine if hospice care is the right solution for her. If she’s ready to move away from curative therapies and live her life to the fullest, then hospice might be exactly what she’s looking for at this stage.
If you or a loved-one are considering hospice care in Smyrna, GA, please call the caring staff at Arcturus Hospice and Palliative Care today. Call 678-383-9973 today to speak to our care team.
Kate Gorinshteyn is the director of marketing at Arcturus Health Care. Arcturus is a fast-growing Hospice striving to provide the highest level of quality care to patients faced with life-limiting illnesses. Our goal is to make each patient as pain-free as possible and give physiological, emotional and spiritual support to both the patient and family. We understand that the decision change from curative to comfort care is difficult, and our team is trained to help you every step of the way!
We are proud to make a difference in the lives of those we serve.