Hospice is a service that most of us will either experience as a care advocate or as a patient. Yet there is still is a lot of confusion about what hospice care is. Only 10% of people will die suddenly, which means 90% of us will be able to plan (somewhat) for our death. My sister Kari and I chat about our experience with home hospice care as our mother has an inoperable tumor. It was a difficult decision to actually go on home hospice but once we were on it, it was an amazing support and stress reliever, not only for the patient but also the family. Hospice is not palliative care. Palliative is often mistaken and interchanged with hospice but palliative care is for those who have a terminal diagnosis but those who are on hospice have a diagnosis with a life expectancy of 6 months or less. There are hospice facilities but home hospice is growing in popularity with people wanting to die at home. This is Part 1 of a 4 part series on death and dying as we walked through the experience with our beloved mother. We hope that this will provide some comfort and insight in death, a natural process that will happen to all beings.

You can watch Dr. Kerr’s popular TED Talk – I See Dead People: Dreams and Visions of the Dying