Dear Jane,
My 72-year-old mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness. cancer six months ago and has been under palliative care for the past few weeks.
My father died a couple of years ago, so my brother and I have been handling his affairs between the two of us, and we quickly realized that his finances were in a pretty dire state.
His medical bills have been astronomical and have added a huge amount of debt to what was already a pretty huge hole.
My brother and I had already been talking about selling the house before she entered hospice; We are both financially stable, but we have our own families and can’t afford to pay off his debt on our own, so putting the property on the market seemed like the only option.
Dear Jane, I have made the decision to sell my mother’s house while she is in hospice care…how can I break the news to her without leaving her devastated?
However, when he entered hospice care, we realized that it was not just an option to consider, but a choice we had to make if we were to have any chance of getting out of inheriting a huge amount of debt.
We put the house on the market a week later and it sold very quickly, which was great.
The thing is, we didn’t tell them. We didn’t want to burden her with debt or the fact that we would be the ones who would have to deal with it, because we were afraid she would insist on returning home and saving on medical bills.
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Looking back, it was a stupid decision.
And now he has told us that he wants to leave hospice so he can die peacefully at home. My heart is broken because that house that he has such good memories of is no longer his. And I have no idea how to tell him the truth.
By trying to make the best of a shitty situation, I feel like my brother and I have only made it 100 times worse. How can we inflict even more pain on a dying woman?
Of,
sinful son
Dear sinful son,
Given the cost of health care in the United States (66.5 percent of bankruptcies are due to medical bills), your situation may be heartbreaking, but you have made a brave and wise decision to help you get out of potentially financial debt. oppressive.
I am very sorry that your mother asked to die at home.
While I tend to recommend honesty in most situations, I also seek to cause the least harm to everyone involved.
I am concerned that knowing that your mother’s house has been sold, particularly in this situation, could be significantly detrimental to her already weakened health.
You can’t win here, but I urge you not to beat yourself up.
It seems to me that the elegant way to handle it is to talk to the hospice staff. Home palliative care is always an interesting alternative, but a hospital bed at home and a visiting palliative care nurse does not provide the same care as being in hospice with full-time, 24-hour care.
A kinder approach, given this shitty situation, is for your mother to believe (and this may very well be true) that there are not enough facilities or care for her to return home, and that staying in hospice will be too much. more comfortable for her.
I’m sorry you’re all going through this and I wish you all peace.
