Hospice ‘what I want,’ Jimmy Carter told doctor after hospital visits

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

Raines, who doubled as hospice director for the nearby Phoebe Sumter Medical Center, suggested that program. “That way we can take care of any problems as they come up at home, and not have to take you back to the hospital,” he said.

“Fine,” Carter said. “That’s what I want.”

Carter died Sunday at age 100. He entered home hospice in February 2023 in his hometown of Plains.

Carter’s casket will depart Saturday from Phoebe Sumter, the community hospital that he helped get funding to build after century-old Sumter County Regional Hospital in Americus was destroyed by a tornado in 2007.

Raines believes Carter was one of those hospice patients whose lives are actually lengthened by a hospice stay. With nurses visiting every few days and doctors available to consult, problems were caught before they turned into emergencies. Stress lowers. Rest gets better.

“It’s about having a better quality of life for the time that you have to live,” Raines said.

Raines said Carter was conscious of his ability to help educate others on health care by sharing his own example.

As Raines’ patient, Carter wasn’t one for engaging in winding conversations. Carter brought the engineer side of his personality to appointments: factual and to the point.

Raines knew him from the community early on: they’d been quail hunting together (and Carter was a good shot, Raines said). When Carter engineered the reopening of a medical clinic with Mercer Medicine in Plains in 2018, Raines became its only family physician. The next year, Carter asked him to become his doctor and Raines gladly obliged, seeing him at first on site and then in home visits.

“You initially feel intimidated because you’re taking care of the ex-president of the United States and a world renowned figure,” Raines said. “And once you go in and you meet them, they’re just like everybody else,” he said, speaking of Mr. and Mrs. Carter. “They were very cordial and polite. And just very easy for me to deal with.”

Raines felt a mutual respect. Carter followed his directions. For instance, Carter was resisting sleeping in the hospital bed they’d brought in to the Carter bedroom as his health further declined. He preferred his own bed. But when the aides told him the hospital bed was doctor’s orders, he complied.

Credit: Contributed

Credit: Contributed

Hospital beds, with their ability to raise and lower the head or legs, and usually with side rails, are often important aids for hospice patients, if they are too weak to scoot up in bed by themselves or to keep from falling off. For Carter, acid reflux made it important to be in a bed that could raise his back at an angle.

In addition to visits from the hospice program, Carter also had his own aides at the house, and until recently they’d lift him into his recliner to see Raines.

Before Rosalynn passed away in November 2023, the Carters would sleep in the same room, Jimmy in his hospital bed and Rosalynn in their regular bed.

Carter had always eaten well, a diet heavy in fruits and vegetables and nuts, and was remarkably healthy for a man in his 90s, Raines said. In hospice he still got some of his favorite foods, although they were usually pureed. That included chicken pot pie. But he still got his beloved blueberry pancakes solid. They practically melted in his mouth.

Last week, Raines was at home when he got the call from Plains. Carter was missing breaths and wasn’t responding to medical aides’ prompts. Raines drove from his home to check on his patient, but Carter stopped breathing just before he walked in the door of the modest Carter home.

The former president’s face and body looked like he had the death he wanted, Raines said: “Peaceful.”