Hospice Organizations in Lubbock Speak Out With Fmr. Pres. Carter receiving End-of-Life Care
LUBBOCK, Texas – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was at home surrounded by loved ones for President’s Day 2023, which is why AccentCare and Hospice of Lubbock sat down with EverythingLubbock.com, discussing hospice as an end-of-life option for people across Texas, including the greater Lubbock community.
“If I have a terminal disease, I wanna be at home surrounded by my loved ones. I don’t wanna be in a hospital with sometimes limited access because of COVID or things that are going on,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown, the Executive Director of Hospice of Lubbock. “I want my dog next to me and so, hospice really does focus on where the patient is and bringing the care to them.”
Hospice of Lubbock , a non-profit, said it has served adult and pediatric hospice patients in 18 surrounding communities for 37 years. Dr. Brown explained that a big part of the organization’s care is supporting families.
“Sometimes our involvement is just a card or a phone call to say, ‘Hey, it’s been a few months, how are you doing?’ but at least from Hospice of Lubbock, if you need more intense grief counseling, we have that available,” Dr. Brown shared. “Or, we have some great community resources that we can refer those families out to if their needs go beyond what we’re able to provide.”
AccentCare is another option that serves terminally ill patients in Lubbock with grief counseling, music therapy and palliative care for pain management.“When we think about a birth, there are a lot of things about the actual setting of a birth that aren’t comfortable, but we always think of it as beautiful,” Dr. Balu Natarajan, Chief Medical Officer of Hospice Division for AccentCare began. “When hospice is done right, with the overall environment and atmosphere being a beautiful thing, our end of life can be exactly the same way.”
Contrary to popular belief, he added, “There are studies out there that talk about how palliative care and hospice sometimes allows people to live longer because when we take away medications that are no longer helping because they’re not curative, many times people live a little bit longer, because we’ve taken away some of those things that sometimes have strange side effects or interactions.”
Hospice of Lubbock said it has never turned anyone away for an inability to pay. To learn more, visit AccentCare’s resources here.
