Grace Hospice Leawood

Robin Frazier _{on Google}

Feb 11th, 2019

Grace Hospice was recommended to me by a social worker at Aberdeen Village Retirement Center where my mother spent her last 11 months of life. Hospice was not even recommended until the last 24 hours of my mother's life even though I kept asking for it for days prior to her death. When you have a loved one on the verge of death you are overwhelmed with emotion. I would tell everyone in that position to interview and read reviews of several different hospice organizations months ahead of time and don't rely on the connection one such company might have with the retirement/health care facility. Aberdeen Village has a relationship with Grace Hospice so that is who they recommend you use. It was a disaster. I can say that the way Grace dealt with my mother still leaves me with chills down my spine. We had four different hospice workers from Grace in the last 28 hours of my mother's life. Three of those four were unacceptable. One of the workers was horrible!!! I will never forget my first sight and smell of her as she came off the elevator reeking of smoke and a horrible sweet sickening smell to try to cover it up. She had on thick, heavy makeup as if she were going to a costume party. Because I told her she smelled of cigarettes, she said she could sit in the hall! She actually suggested that she sit in the hall with her laptop and phone while we needed help with my dying mother. Hospice workers are supposed to work with a patient. I fired her and called the Grace Hospice office, getting a young girl who wasn't very professional or caring at all. Just a job to her. Another person came for what turned out to be Mother's last night on earth. When I arrived back to her room very early in the morning, that hospice worker had creepily painted my mother's finger and toenails fire engine red. I can barely write about this it is so disgusting. My poor mother dying and having someone painting her toe and fingernails. Never would my mother have worn that color and why on earth would a hospice worker make the decision to let a dying woman smell the strong odor of nail polish, let alone the bizarre process of painting her nails as she lay dying. The morning shift person sat in the corner of the room in Mom's recliner complaining of a migraine. She finally got a replacement. She was absolutely NO help or comfort. The final hospice worker was fine. None were like I'd ever heard about - sweet, loving, kind, comforting. My sister and I were traumatized by this horrible experience and continue to be so two years after Mother's death. In telling this story to a woman who I didn't even know, an expression came over her face of complete frustration and sadness and said she'd used Grace a year earlier and had a similar horrible experience, registering her complaint about the worker with too much orange makeup, smelling of smoke. She was in shock that woman was still a so-called hospice worker. I would never let them near anyone I loved and cared about. It is not the hospice you would hope for. Do not use Grace Hospice. It is just a business to the owners.