MISSION, Kan. (AP) – The owner of the morgue, Brian Simmons, has been making more trips to homes to collect bodies to be cremated and embalmed since the pandemic.
With COVID-19 devastating communities in Missouri, their two-person teams regularly arrive at homes in the Springfield area and remove the bodies of people who have decided to die at home, instead of spending their last days in a health home or hospital where the family visits were prohibited during the pandemic.
He fully understands why people are choosing to die at home: his own 49-year-old daughter succumbed to coronavirus just before Christmas at a Springfield hospital, where the family only received updates by phone as their condition worsened.
“The separation part is really tough, rough rough,” said Simmons. “My daughter went to the hospital and we saw her once through the glass when they put her in the ventilator, and then we never saw her again until after she died.”
Across the country, terminally ill patients – both with COVID-19 and other illnesses – are making similar decisions and dying at home, instead of facing the daunting scenario of saying goodbye to loved ones behind a glass or during phone calls. video.
“What we’re seeing with COVID is certainly that patients want to stay home,” said Judi Lund Person, vice president of regulatory compliance at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “They don’t want to go to the hospital. They don’t want to go to a nursing home. “
National palliative care organizations are reporting that the facility is seeing double-digit percentage increases in the number of patients seen at home.
The phenomenon affected the Carroll Hospice in Westminster, Maryland, which saw a 30% to 40% increase in demand for home care, said executive director Regina Bodnar. She said that avoiding asylums and the risks of coronavirus are the biggest factor behind the increase. “
Lisa Kossoudji, who supervises nurses at Dayton Hospice, Ohio, took her own mother, now 95, from assisted living and brought her home to live with her after the pandemic. She had gone weeks without seeing her mother and was concerned that her condition was getting worse because she was being restricted to her room while the service was trying to limit the potential for the virus to spread.
Her mother, who has a condition that causes the artery walls to thicken and harden, is now receiving hospice services. Kossoudji is seeing the families she serves to make similar choices.
“A lot of people are bringing home people who physically have a lot of physical problems, whether they have a feeding tube or a windpipe, things that an ordinary layman would look at and say, ‘Oh my God, I can’ don’t do that, ‘” he said she. “But they are still willing to bring them home because we want to be able to be with them and see them.”
Before the pandemic, hospice staff cared for patients who died of heart disease, cancer, dementia and other terminal illnesses in long-term care facilities and, to a lesser extent, in homes. Many families hesitated to follow the path of death at home due to the many logistical challenges, including working hours and complicated medical needs.
But the pandemic changed things. People suddenly started working at home and had more time, and became more comfortable with the home hospice, knowing the alternative with the lack of visitation in nursing homes.
“What happened to COVID is that everything was on steroids, so to speak. It all happened so fast that suddenly family members were prepared to take care of their loved ones at home, ”said Carole Fisher, president of the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation. “Everything accelerated.”
“I’ve heard families say, ‘Now I can take care of my elderly mother in a very different way than before, because I work at home,'” she added. “And then there is more unity in the family unit because of COVID.”
Dying at home is not for everyone, however. Taking care of the needs of a seriously ill relative can mean sleepless nights and more stress as the pandemic intensifies.
Karen Rubel recalled that she did not want to take her own 81-year-old mother to the hospital when she had a stroke in September and then struggled to get her home as soon as possible.
She is president and CEO of Nathan Adelson Hospice in Las Vegas, which has designated one of its inpatient facilities for COVID-19 patients.
“I understand where people are coming from,” she said. “They are afraid”.