OK, so my dad, once again, decided to have aspiration pneumonia and landed in the hospital for a couple of days. The Doc comes in to talk to me the first day he was there, he was only there 2 days, and says we may need to "consider different options."
What were those options? He mentioned hospice and palliative care. It aggravates me no end, every time he ends up in the hospital, they think he is demented and doesn't really understand what's going on. Every time, I explain to them, no, he is not normally confused, demented, whatever you want to call it. He is sick, and he does get "crazy" when he is sick.
I blew it off, did not want to deal with his suggestion, sorry, but we aren't there yet. I told Carol, my sister, about the conversation. Today, she asked him what he meant by palliative care. He said we would just not treat any future pneumonia, we would provide care to make him comfortable, but sort of "let nature take its course."
What???
Would anyone really do that? Could anyone really do that? How would you let someone lie there with pneumonia and just die? How cruel would that be?
I'm a little worried about the future now. I would be the first one to say that, if I were in a lot of pain, had a terminal disease, something like that, just make me comfortable and let me go. But if I am lucid, not terminal, if I'm not in pain, I really don't want to be lying there, miserable, dying from something like pneumonia. I can't imagine how miserable that would be.
I think I'm afraid.
