Things change.

You can change your mind. The course of a serious illness can be very unpredictable. People get better, they get worse, they get better again. Nobody can know what will happen.

That’s why Medicare and insurance companies allow you to change your mind.

Once you choose either palliative care or hospice, you’ll have the support of an expert team of medical professionals and they will help you make choices along the way.

If you choose hospice care and things change, you can opt out of hospice services and come back later, if that’s what you want to do. Hospice is about choice. You get to choose what you want to do and your hospice team helps make that happen.

You can start with supportive or palliative care and move to hospice. You can go back to palliative care if you want to try a new treatment. You go into a long-term care facility. Just let your team know if you have questions and they will work with you to honor your choices.

Some of the reasons to opt out of hospice:

• You get better and your doctor believes that going back to more aggressive treatment could help
• There’s a new treatment you’d like to try
• You want to go into the hospital for certain types of treatment
• Your family situation changes
• You just feel like stopping hospice treatment

Whatever the reason, you always have a choice.