The life of a hospice nurse

[lauradrops]

My Father did hospice for almost a year and a half in my home and we were lucky to have the same nurse the entire time. She was an amazing person, kind,caring and very capable. My Father was a difficult man, but he adored her and trusted everything she said. They developed a loving bond and she cried her eyes out when he passed. I will be forever grateful for her heart of gold.♥️

[kevxu]

Originally Posted by Cida

I find that so touching - that you would consider a job that must be so difficult, and so depressing, to be a privilege.

I have a friend who is doing it now. She had maybe three stints doing home nursing with agencies and she was very depressed by each one. She then started as a hospice nurse, and at Christmas time wrote me an email about how happy she was with the work and how much of a privilege she felt it was.

When we lived in the same town together I found her a good combination of kind and practical. And it is interesting that she commented on how much she has liked and enjoyed some of her clients and what interesting people they were to be with. And this reminded me of something in the past.

When my best friend was dying he turned his entire life over to me, just plopped it all in my hands....his money, financial and medical powers of attorney, executor of his estate, choice of health care service and diciest of all I chose the hospice nurses as he did not want to. He was a very feisty guy in his healthy life and very much given to taking control and running the show to the point of annoying people over and over. So, I thought this would be the role from hell.

But the three women - with very different personalities - were unbelievably good, and damn they made friends with him and he was a p ussy cat! I worked with them after work and on weekends. Given his normally combative personality, I was amazed that he was easy-going with them and truly delighted when each one arrived. These women actually made him happy right up to the twenty minutes before he died.

He was young, he was a take-charge guy reduced to a living corpse, he was dying, he went blind, he became so ill we found he was passing tissue from his organs when he had bowel movements...and these women made him happy in the midst of all of this! They were excellent caregivers in the physical way, but they were incredible as caring human beings. His decline was squalid, but they made him joyful. And when he breathed his last breath I could not stop crying because of how damned happy they had made him through all the misery and filth.

[Cida]

Originally Posted by kevxu

I have a friend who is doing it now. She had maybe three stints doing home nursing with agencies and she was very depressed by each one. She then started as a hospice nurse, and at Christmas time wrote me an email about how happy she was with the work and how much of a privilege she felt it was.

When we lived in the same town together I found her a good combination of kind and practical. And it is interesting that she commented on how much she has liked and enjoyed some of her clients and what interesting people they were to be with. And this reminded me of something in the past.

When my best friend was dying he turned his entire life over to me, just plopped it all in my hands....his money, financial and medical powers of attorney, executor of his estate, choice of health care service and diciest of all I chose the hospice nurses as he did not want to. He was a very feisty guy in his healthy life and very much given to taking control and running the show to the point of annoying people over and over. So, I thought this would be the role from hell.

But the three women - with very different personalities - were unbelievably good, and damn they made friends with him and he was a p ussy cat! I worked with them after work and on weekends. Given his normally combative personality, I was amazed that he was easy-going with them and truly delighted when each one arrived. These women actually made him happy right up to the twenty minutes before he died.

He was young, he was a take-charge guy reduced to a living corpse, he was dying, he went blind, he became so ill we found he was passing tissue from his organs when he had bowel movements...and these women made him happy in the midst of all of this! They were excellent caregivers in the physical way, but they were incredible as caring human beings. His decline was squalid, but they made him joyful. And when he breathed his last breath I could not stop crying because of how damned happy they had made him through all the misery and filth.

That's a sad but touching story - and I note your own modesty in not mentioning how much time and effort you must have put into overseeing his life.