My father became poorly again due to aspirating and got readmitted to hospital a month ago, this was the 3rd hospital stay in a month and he was found to be aspirating on all consistencies by the speech and language team. We reconsidered our initial preference for end of life care at home and fortunately a hospice became available without much wait.
The hospice staff were excellent and it was such a different experience than the many hospital wards I’ve visited over the years.
My beloved father took his last breath yesterday and parted from this world. His death took what seemed like an eternity and made me realise that the hospice was definitely the right place. My father’s passing wasn’t peaceful at all until the very last hour. He was breathing rapidly and had a rattle sound on his chest that would have been near impossible to sleep through at home. Going to the hospice to be by his side was hard enough, the doctors say that it’s unlikely he felt breathless however seeing him puffing away like that was incredibly hard to look at and endure. 8 days without any oral intake he went by the time of his passing, it’s incredible how resilient the human body can be. Bare in mind despite 17 years of living with Alzheimer’s he was only 65 at his time of passing.
In the last hour his breathing finally slowed and became shallower, initially I wondered if this was caused by the extra morphine they had given in the syringe driver that afternoon but when I saw he had no pupil-light reflex I knew there wasn’t much longer left to go.
He had my brother and I by his side as he took his last breaths, and a powerful moment that I’ll never forget is the single tear that came from his right eye the very moment before the last breath he would ever take.
Having lived through that experience I can say two things. The first is that it would have been psychologically incredibly difficult to have watched him go through that 24/7 at home. At least with the hospice we left each night and came back in the morning thus getting a mental break. And secondly, my experience with the hospice was incredibly positive and completely different to how you feel trying to chase staff in a typical busy and manic NHS ward.
My biggest worry was around visiting and Covid and we were restricted to 6 named visitors (max 3 at a time) however the staff were flexible as the end drew closer.
I hope he is now resting in a place of happiness, and joy and has found the peace that his illness so cruelly denied him during his time here on earth.