Cancer Diary: Hospice, the Hospital Bed, and the Psychology of “Not Yet”
When hospice arrived, they brought the usual equipment: the folder of forms, the quiet voices, and the hospital bed. The bed is always the centerpiece of their plan — adjustable, wipeable, railings ready, a machine built for decline. It’s meant to make caregiving easier, to prevent falls, to protect fragile skin. It’s the “right” thing, medically speaking.
Carl took one look at it and refused.
Not angrily. Not dramatically. Just a firm, quiet no.
He would not lie in that bed.
He would not be “that” person.
Not yet.
People talk about denial as if it’s a flaw, but I’ve come to see it differently. Denial can be a kind of dignity — a last boundary a person draws around their identity. For Carl, the hospital bed wasn’t a convenience. It was a symbol. A line in the sand. A declaration that the end had arrived.
And he wasn’t ready to cross that line, even when his body was telling the truth more clearly than his words.
So the hospital bed sat there, unused. A piece of medical furniture in the corner, waiting for a moment he never allowed. He stayed in his own bed — the one that held decades of ordinary nights, ordinary mornings, ordinary life. The one that felt like home, not hospice.
I didn’t push him.
Sometimes love means letting someone keep their illusions, especially when the truth is already doing its work quietly, cell by cell.
In the end, the hospital bed was never the point. The point was that he got to remain himself — stubborn, private, determined — right up to the last breath. Hospice supported his body. I supported his humanity. And the bed stayed empty, a reminder that psychological reality doesn’t always match medical reality, and that’s okay.
We don’t die as patients.
We die as the people we’ve always been.
And sometimes that means saying no to the hospital bed.
For other Cancer Diary posts, click HERE.
Blog editor's note: As a memorial to Carl, and simply because it is truly needed, MSI Press is now hosting a web page, Carl's Cancer Compendium, as a one-stop starting point for all things cancer, to make it easier for those with cancer to find answers to questions that can otherwise take hours to track down on the Internet and/or from professionals. The CCC is expanded and updated weekly. As part of this effort, each week, on Monday, this blog will carry an informative, cancer-related story -- and be open to guest posts: Cancer Diary.
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