Victoria TX Hospice
What to Expect
Victoria TX Hospice focuses on caring, not curing. We believe that everyone has a right to die pain-free and with dignity, and that families will receive the necessary support to allow each of us to do so.
We achieve this through a team approach by providing the patient with medical care and pain management. We’re here for the family as well with emotional and spiritual support as the needed.
What is specifically provided by Victoria TX hospice?
We are a knowledgeable staff comprised of doctors, specialists and volunteers and we all deliver care to our patients according to our area of expertise. In addition, Victoria TX Hospice will help provide medications, supplies, equipment and hospital services that are related to the life-limiting illness. We can also assist the patient and family in locating community resources for additional care and items not covered by hospice.
Our Team
At Victoria TX Hospice, we focus on adding life to days at a time when days can no longer be added to life.
Victoria TX Hospice is a program of palliative home care and supportive services that provide physical, psychological, social and spiritual care for terminally ill persons and their families. It is a comprehensive, medically directed, team-oriented program that accentuates pain control and symptom management for patients who no longer respond to routine aggressive medical care. The focus of hospice care is palliative rather than curative in nature.
Victoria TX Hospice care is provided by an interdisciplinary team of professionals including doctors, nurses, therapists, certified home health aides, social workers, clergy and volunteers working together to provide a full range of services. Our team, along with the patient’s physician, works with the patient and family to develop an individual plan of care to manage the patient’s symptoms and meet the goals of the patient and family.
Our team at Victoria TX Hospice is educated and experienced. We believe in providing the best care possible to our patients. Our goal is to make the remaining days of your loved one’s life as enjoyable and peaceful as possible.
Why Victoria TX Hospice?
Although all hospices specialize in the care of life-limiting illnesses, the quality of care and extent of services can differ widely among hospice care providers. Many hospices are part of large, for-profit health care systems. However, we are an independent, community health care provider. That means that instead of looking for profit, we are passionate about providing care to our patients.
Many patients who are diagnosed with a life-limiting illness want to live the remainder of their lives in the comfort, security and familiarity of home, surrounded by those who love them. Our goal is to provide peace and comfort to the patient and their loved ones through pain control, symptom management, psychological and spiritual aspects of care. Victoria TX Hospice helps to ensure quality of life for people faced with these life limiting illnesses by providing palliative home care.
With Victoria TX Hospice Care, patients and loved ones regain a sense of control over their lives. We take comfort and pride in the fact they are doing everything possible for their loved one. We allow the patient to concentrate on living fully instead of focusing all their waking moments being consumed by pain.
Grief and Loss
While we are here for your loved one, we are also here for you and your family during this time of grief. Grief is a normal and natural response when we suffer a loss. While everyone will experience a loss at some point, the symptoms of grief are often misunderstood – both by the people going through it and the people around them. By raising grief awareness, individuals in mourning can better understand their own reactions and their loved ones can better support them.
Symptoms of Grief
When we stop thinking of grief as a timeline, we can look at the actual physical, mental, emotional and spiritual reactions individuals may experience. Simply knowing these feelings are normal can help some people in mourning. Understanding the symptoms of grief is also helpful for those around them.
What a mourner is experiencing today may fade and be replaced with other reactions. It is not a linear process. Mourners may circle back to emotions. The bereaved may go through a period of time when they feel at peace and then return to sadness. All of this is normal.
Common Mental Reactions to Grief
Difficulties in concentrating
Continuously thinking about the loss
Difficulty making decisions
Low self-esteem
Believing you were responsible for the loss
Increased or decreased dreams
Increased nightmares
Thinking everyone is watching you
Thinking you are different from everyone else
Self-destructive thoughts
Common Physical Reactions to Grief
Sleeping changes – too little or too much
Weight and appetite changes
Tiredness
Deep sighing
Feeling weak
Energized: feeling strong/invincible
Muscle tension
Pounding heart
Headaches and stomach aches
Easily shaken by certain sights and sounds (particularly those that remind you of the loss)
Increased number of colds and infections
Common Spiritual Reactions to Grief
Feeling lost and empty
Feeling abandoned or punished by God
Questioning a reason to go on living
Feeling like you don’t belong
Feeling angry with God
Questioning your religious beliefs
Feeling spiritually connected to the person who died
Feeling spiritually connected to God
Needing to receive forgiveness
Finding hope in prayer/spiritual beliefs
Finding purpose in life
Common Behaviors and Social Interactions When Grieving
Trying to stay constantly active
Overachieving
Underachieving
Changes in work performance
Being preoccupied and forgetful
Being more clumsy
Crying a lot, or more easily
Blaming others
Not caring about things, wanting to drop out
Wanting to spend more time alone
Dropping out of social activities
Pulling away from other’s attempts to touch and comfort you
Wanting more attention and affection
Seeking approval and reassurance from others
Being aggressive, getting more arguments
Showing more creative expression through music, writing, and art
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life-threatening illness.
Palliative care provides many services, including:
relief from pain and other symptoms
affirming life and regarding dying as a normal process
not hastening or postponing death
integrating the psychological and spiritual aspects of care
offering a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death
offering support to the family to help cope during this difficult time
enhancing the quality of life
improving the course of the illness
Call us if you are in need of more information about hospice care.