Many people mistakenly associate hospice only with sorrow. However, most hospice experiences include times of joy and peace and heartwarming closeness. People often comment that hospice experiences, although involving a death, give them a deeper understanding of life. Choosing hospice care for oneself or a loved one can be a difficult decision. Patients and their families may have spent many months or years concentrating on curative care designed to halt the disease process, opting for chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation therapy.
Hospice becomes appropriate when the focus on curing is no longer supporting quality of life.
Whether they have come to this decision on their own, or their doctor has encouraged them to consider it, patients have decided they do not want to spend any more of the time they have left seeking aggressive curative care. However, hope and healing are always present. Healing may mean not the remission of cancer, but the resolution of distress in the family before death occurs. Or healing may mean that a certain symptom is controlled. A person may be seeking a cure for their spirit with the knowledge that they probably will not find a cure for their body.