Lizaderp

What do you do for money?

Aquamation!

https://aquamationinfo.com/

A more eco friendly alternative, right up there with green burial and human composting.

I've told my mom that now that she's getting near Medicare age, it's a good time to start end of line planning, but it's just on her to do list. I work in hospice so I've seen first hand the pain of family scrambling to figure shit out as the patient nears end of life. But her own planning is still something she'll get round to when she does. Even me working in the industry can't seem to figure out because there's no one real magic way or special trick to get people to acknowledge that this is important and death doesn't care about your to do list. Any advice?

Second question, did you meet Caitlin Doughty?

Haha yeah. I have a list. The best example occurred on Wednesday. I'll get a call about a patients oxygen concentrator alarming and I'll ask them to get the caregiver on the phone for troubleshooting and they refuse and just insist I send a guy. Like motherfucker, get in that room right now, you can save a life by flicking a switch. That kind of stuff makes me too angry to put into words. If I send one of my techs out for this, that's taking them away from someone who needs them more. And then the nerve to complain about the $200 bill for "just flipping a switch" like I didn't give you plenty of opportunity. This happens all the time and the facilities that do this stuff tend to ignore my company's routine needs for backend work census, audit, etc, but they have no problem blowing up the phones because machine go beep and manual hard. If the employees at a facility are over worked and have attitude, I know the residents are feeling it and therefore the care isn't as good as a place that's adequately staffed. So when you're shopping for a facility for Mom, ask the staff if they would put their mom's there. If staff is too burnt out to care, mom is going to feel like a burden, because she will be. Find a facility that genuinely sees the residents as humans not just a Medicare payment. Plus, that's $200 they're giving me instead of using on actual patient care, facility, faculty, or even lifestyle things for the residents. Heck yes I want you to spend the insurance money on a fitness class or a movie night or you know, things that mean mom is actually still living a life.

I work in hospice and it's definitely easier to talk to my mom about her own future than it is a perfect strangers.