Start here: the reads in the order the first weeks arrive

If you have just landed here, you are probably tired, and you probably have one question that feels too big to type. This page does not ask you to read everything. It puts the reads on this site in the order the first weeks of hospice at home usually unfold, so you can take the one step that fits today and leave the rest for later.

Nothing on this path is medical advice. Where a read touches anything clinical, it sends the question back to the hospice nurse, and so should you.

The path, one step at a time

1. See the hours as they really are.Start with hospice at home is a visit schedule, not a staff. It lays a routine week over the clock, so the gap between the visits becomes something you can plan for instead of something you feel guilty about. The 24-hour strip on the front page is the short version.
2. Learn which level of care you are getting.The four levels of hospice care explains routine home care, continuous home care, respite and general inpatient care in plain words. Most families at home are on routine care, and knowing that changes what you can reasonably ask for.
3. Name the jobs between the visits.Between the visits turns the unspoken work into a list with three columns: hospice, the family, and a hired non-medical caregiver. Print it. Put names next to the jobs.
4. Make a plan for the nights before you need it.Read what happens at night, then sleeping in shifts. Together they cover the on-call line, who is actually in the room, and a rotation sheet for two to four people.
5. Ask for rest without apology.Respite in hospice explains the inpatient respite benefit and how to ask for it. Read it before you are desperate, because the asking is easier when you are not.
6. Look honestly at the promise.If someone promised to keep her home, read I promised her and the conditions, in order. They are gentle about what a promise can and cannot include.
7. Decide whether you need more hands.Count the hours that are yours, then read hiring a caregiver on top of hospice if the count is more than your family can carry.
8. Make the local calls.Hospice at home in west county covers choosing a hospice, VA hospice for a veteran and the agencies on aging. The local help directory has the numbers, each checked on the organization's own page.

If today is already too much

Skip the path. Read you are overwhelmed: here is what you do, in order and you cannot do this alone. Then call the hospice line and say, in these words, that the family is not holding. That sentence is allowed. It is part of what the line is for.

If you are writing things down for the nurse

What to ask the hospice nurse tonight lists the changes families notice and routes every one of them to the hospice line. It does not tell you what any change means, on purpose. For a parent who cannot be left alone, that sentence is a staffing problem, and who changes her at night is the practical read for the small hours.

Everything else

How long hospice at home can last explains benefit periods without a countdown, and dad wants to die at home walks through how families make that wish workable. Every read is listed, by section, on the all reads page.