Somehow, it seems like an anti-trust issue when large insurer is also the country’s largest hospice. Sounds pretty scary to me!
Also sounds like patients and families really don’t have any good understanding of the options available with pros and cons RE ventilators, as well as feeding tubes. One of our friends was told his wife would be on a feeding tube for a few months—it’s been over 4 years now and is an emotional,mental and financial hardship for caregiver AND patient.
@oldmom4896 The breathing tube article is an important study. It’s a good example of why goals of care are important. I had these conversations with my parents when I first started to notice them being forgetful.
When a feeding tube was mentioned as a possibility for my dad, one of the nurses told us that he might live for years, taking in nourishment but otherwise functioning no better; he had had a massive stroke, followed by sepsis, and was miserable at the time. We declined the feeding tube.
I have a question about fractured hips and why they foretell death for the elderly. My father passed away this morning, having broken his hip last Wednesday. He was 91 and already enrolled in in-home hospice care, so he was not a candidate for surgery. The only other alternative was to be bedridden and on morphine, and it only took about 3 days of that for him to die. Granted he did not eat at all or take in many liquids in those 3 days, being mostly unconscious, but we are sort of stunned at how quickly the broken hip led directly to his death! The hospice nurse called it the Death Fall, and I guess in my family’s case, it was indeed. But such an unfathomable phenomenon!
Sorry for your loss @b1ggreenca. I hope you can find some answers and closure.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3118151/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3597289/
These are links to studies about hip fractures in elderly people.
I’m so sorry @b1ggreenca !
Yes, may his memory be a blessing.
Sorry for your loss, @b1ggreenca.
So sorry. This must have been a shock even with him already being on hospice.
It looks like the more immediate causes of death following this type of fall include pulmonary embolism and infection.
Otherwise the threefold increase in mortality over 9 years in the first linked study indicates a slower decline toward death, with things like circulatory disease and Alzheimer’s. So it seems as if a fractured hip must be a sign of other factors that lead to greater mortality. Maybe the lost mobility also has an effect-?
But the latter issues aren’t relevant for your Dad.
Take care, again sorry for your loss.
I am so sorry for your loss.
@b1ggreenca sending condolences. That is a fast and scary decline. Hard to deal with when it is so sudden.
This also happened to my mom, very similar situation, also on hospice care for an unrelated issue. The broken bone, in and of itself, is not a fatal injury, but when it happens to someone of that age, and they are on morphine and not taking in much or any food or fluids by mouth and they are not on IV fluids, death often results simply from dehydration.
Actually, from what I’ve read, it’s not a bad way to die. The patient does not feel pain or discomfort.
I am so sorry for your loss
So sorry for your loss and how sudden it was.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
Oh no @b1ggreenca, I’m so sorry for your loss. That had to be a shock.
Sorry for your loss @b1ggreenca I think the stats I heard years ago about hip fractures is that there is a 50% mortality rate 2 years following the fracture. There are the obvious issues of things such as infection and pulmonary embolism. But hip fractures point to general frailness (brittle bones, falling) that hastens end of life but hard to quantify. Plus, any immobility contributes to the frailness.
My daughter is determined to actually get her Bachelor’s degree at 55; she has always regretted not applying herself when she was young and it would have been so much easier. When my mother fell and broke her upper arm, my daughter mentioned it to a retired doctor who was auditing the course. Then when the pulmonary embolisms happened, she said something and he said that when a “long bone” is broken, there are usually blood clots.