ABC News: During the two months that Regina Holliday’s husband, Fred, was hospitalized with cancer, he received a tower of “Get Well Soon” cards, each a reminder of the friends and family who cared about him. But when all hope for recovery was gone and he entered hospice care, the cards stopped coming.
“You get cards and messages when you are fighting the good fight, but the minute you are done fighting, people don’t know what to do,” Holliday said. “Once they hear the word hospice, they tend to shut down.”
Holliday is now lobbying Hallmark, the world’s largest distributor of greeting cards, to offer a line of cards specifically for those entering hospice.
Holliday, an artist who became a health care advocate after her husband died three years ago, said she wanted to help people find ways to talk about important end-of-life issues. Last year, when she was asked on a tweet chat about ways to encourage these kinds of conversations, she said the answer was for Hallmark to create hospice cards.
ABC Tweet Chat on End of Life Issues
At 1 p.m. ET today, Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News’ chief health and medical correspondent, will host a one-hour tweet chat to discuss important end-of-life care issues. Experts from the Conversation Project, the Mayo Clinic, AARP, TedMed and Aging Care will be tweeting their advice and support, along with various hospice representatives and caregivers.