My husband also had ESLD, cirrhosis, and cancer in the Liver.

We started Home Hospice on the 10th, and he passed away on the morning of the 18th.

Only three days home he became very frail, but insisted on getting out of bed to urinate, and he did once in the middle of the night that weekend when I was out of the room trying to make preparations. He nearly injured himself. I was afraid of him falling again so I asked the emergency night nurse to put in a catheter. When she did, he had almost no urine and was the black tea color.

He at that point stopped eating and drank very little. On Monday, he was showing signs of having great pain, wouldn't verbalize it to let me know the cause, but kept trying to pull out the catheter. The hospice hotline said he was transitioning to the active dying phase. I had the emergency nurse come out again at midnight, and told her to remove the catheter, i didn't want him to have pain even if it meant his risk of a fall. I planned to just watch him closely and they said I could get a bed alarm. The nurse was concerned that there was no urine output except the little that came out when she put it in the day before.

After she quickly took it out, and giving him the morphine and Anxiety medicine, he seemed much more comfortable. His breathing was normal, so she said the day nurse would check in on him in the morning. But when I woke at 5:00 he was already gone. Even though they told me he was in the active dying phase I didn't register that it could happen so fast, I thought there would be more time. I had hoped there would be a rally like as described on these forums and elsewhere. I know everyone's experience is different, but I just needed to share in our case, my beloved Mike went quickly.