Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, 96 recently entered home hospice care as per the Carter Center on Friday. It has been noted that she joins former President Jimmy Carter, 99 who began receiving medical care at home last February via Media Ite.
According to CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, “one of the main focuses of home hospice is to try to figure out exactly how aggressive therapy should be going forward.”
Mrs. Carter was diagnosed with dementia last spring.
“It’s not necessarily associated with imminent end of life. I think that is often a misconception of what home hospice is. This is to provide more comfort care and more of that medical care at home for her. And it sounds like that that will start now.”
Gupta told CNN’s Pamela Brown:
“I think as a doctor, Pamela, we know that at some point when a disease or overall someone’s health, we know that they’re not going to recover, but at the same time does not mean that things are imminent. And I think that is just a very important point to stress. So, I’m not surprised, but I think that lot of people were surprised because when they first heard the news about former President Carter going into hospice care, they thought that that meant that we would hear about the fact that he had died sometime soon, and it has been several months. And I think that that’s really important to keep in mind for Rosalynn Carter, as well. We don’t know if something specific triggered the need for home hospice or sort of progression of the symptoms of dementia. But, for whatever reason, much of the care that she would have needed to go to the hospital for, go to clinics for, can now be provided in the home. So that is a source of comfort in and of itself.”
