They’d been unwell with cancer for months and it had led to them becoming bed-bound. Their children had tried to look after them to the best of their abilities. The pain had worsened recently and they’d felt more and more fatigued. The family was not coping well and needed help. When admission to hospice was suggested the family had considered it over a few days before agreeing to it.

On arrival, the patient was in pain but was able to make themselves understood easily. Pain relief was provided with good effect. A family member was rostered to be available all day and all night long. Just in case our patient needed anything overnight.

On review the next morning, the patient needed several extra pain relief doses. We incorporated the extra doses into the syringe driver which was running continuously. We talked to the patient’s son about what was happening. We talked about how worried we were, that she might continue to deteriorate further and that we did not want there to be any surprises.

The next morning and our patient’s pain was controlled but they were no longer speaking clearly. It was difficult to understand their speech, and for them to understand our speech. A marked difference compared to yesterday. More family members had come to visit and we spoke to the eldest son. We brought him up to date with what was happening to his parent. Our patient was dying and possibly had days left to live.

Our patient had a moist cough and was troubled by worsened dyspnoea. We explained that we would not recommend antibiotic treatment if there was a chest infection, given the end-stage cancer our patient was troubled by. We needed to make some changes to their medication mixture. The son appreciated what we were doing, and was going to let the rest of the family know what was going to happen. No surprises.