Art Buchwald Quotes

A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.

Hospice means end-of-life care. The admission ticket is a diagnosis from a doctor that you have six months or less to live.

Is the care of the dying man truly robbing care from the poor man? How reliably can we know when someone is in the last ten days of life?

When I got to the hospice I was under the impression it would be a two- or three-week stay. But here I still am, six weeks later, and I've gotten so well Medicare won't pay for me anymore.

The evidence is that people who enter hospice don't have shorter lives. In many cases they are longer.

I did not fully understand the dread term 'terminal illness' until I saw Heathrow for myself.

Hospice is such a tremendous thing. Patients seem to reach an inner peace.

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

I don't want a few extra weeks of life at enormous cost, for example, when it comes to the end.

Having been an oncologist and having cared for scores, if not hundreds, of dying patients, when you don't have a treatment that can shrink the tumor and the patient will die, it's a very difficult conversation. It's emotionally draining.

I accept the dying process. I would just like to be as healthy as I possibly can at each step and phase along the way.

The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped.

In health care today, we spend most of the dollars - in terms of treating disease - in the last two years of a person's life.

The end of life is likely to be an important focus for innovation. Most people die in hospitals, tied up with tubes and with their bodies pumped full of drugs. Yet most would rather die at home and with more control over the timing and manner of their death.

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65.

I've written and passed laws to give Medicare beneficiaries access to life saving cancer drugs and to ensure that seniors don't have to give up the prospect of a cure when they go into hospice care.

I had, in my legal practice, often encountered really shocking examples of the devastating impact of the costs of long-term medical care on meager incomes. And, just before I was elected, I had my own personal experience in paying very considerable bills for my mother's terminal illness.

We could keep his body going, but it was trying its hardest to die.

Hospice has brought such a light in my life. It is something I will be involved with until I need hospice myself.

I've been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn't look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I'd want someone like me around. And I will be there!

For months before he passed, my dad would have terrible night sweats, and soak through his sheets, often several times a night. Each time, mom would gently roll him over, replace the sheets, and roll him back - then spend the whole next day washing several sets of sheets, only to repeat the routine each night.

'Incurable' is a tough word. So is 'terminal.'

Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.