h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm just back from the pub. My colleague and friend K had the news that her father was being moved from the hospital to a specialist care unit in another part of town, so of course we went to the pub. It's the great Australian tradition of avoidance.

We drank and talked and drank and talked. No subject was off-limits, apart from the reason we were there. K's partner joined us, then a series of other people, and the talk continued. Holiday plans, dinner plans, the idea that we might go to the pub later this week just for something different. Everything except the real reason we were there.

Then K mentioned her father, how awful it was that he was so ill, and how she thought they might take him from the specialist unit back to the hospital for treatment as needed.

The specialist unit is a hospice for the dying.

K's partner was thinking what I was thinking - that somehow, quite soon, he'll have to say 'Sweetheart, he probably won't be coming home'.

Ivan.

Not all hospices are just for the dying, they are specialists in symptom control as well. Very often people with cancer that is causing very troublesome pain or sickness will be admitted to a hospice to get their medications sorted out, and then go back to wherever they were before.

I know hospices can work wonders. My father was admitted to the hospice as a terminal case, and got better, and came home - for long enough to make Mum hope and believe he could recover. A few weeks later we put his ashes under a tree.

This time, it really doesn't sound good at all... This man has declined all treatment other than pain management. He wants to go, by the sound of it.

Sorry, that was an abrupt post, I was in a rush and at work.

Thought that might be the case.

That is a really tough place.

Once they reached that point (pain relief only) with my father in law, things weren't too long in progressing. Which didn't actually make it any easier for my mother in law to take in.

saying good bye isn't always easy

Sometimes it doesn't need saying. K very probably realises the truth but doesn't want to put it out there.

This entry is really moving. Your second paragraph totally sums up what it's like in these instances.

Deb

Ivan, I'm sorry to hear about your friend's father's condition. She's lucky to have such a good friend.

oh bugger

I'm so sorry. Poor K. My condolences.

I'm sorry to hear this, too.

When my mother started hospice last year, it was just shy of two months before she died.

For the record - K's father died last night.

It's one of those cases where a quick end is a good thing. He was in so much pain.