February is known for hearts—paper ones in store windows, candy wrapped in red foil, cards that say “love” in looping script. It’s also American Heart Month, a time to raise awareness about cardiovascular health, prevention, and treatment. In hospice care, we see the heart a little differently. Not just as an organ that beats, but as the emotional center of a person’s life—the place where love, memory, fear, and meaning all reside.
From the hospice lens, Heart Month isn’t only about cholesterol numbers or blood pressure readings. It’s about honoring the whole heart: physical, emotional, and spiritual.
When Heart Disease Becomes a Life-Limiting Illness
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States. For many of the patients we serve, conditions like congestive heart failure, advanced coronary artery disease, or cardiomyopathy have become life-limiting illnesses after years of treatments, procedures, and hospitalizations.
By the time someone enters hospice care, the goal has shifted. We are no longer focused on curing disease, but on comfort, dignity, and quality of life. That shift can feel heavy for patients and families—but it can also be profoundly healing.
Hospice allows people with advanced heart disease to step off the exhausting cycle of emergency rooms and ICU stays and instead focus on what matters most to them: being at home, being comfortable, and being surrounded by people they love.
Caring for the Physical Heart
From a clinical standpoint, hospice teams are skilled in managing the complex symptoms that often come with advanced heart disease—shortness of breath, fatigue, anxiety, swelling, pain, and insomnia. Nurses carefully adjust medications to ease breathing and reduce discomfort. We teach families how to recognize changes, manage symptoms, and feel confident caring for their loved one at home.
But physical care is only one part of the picture.
The Emotional Weight of Heart Illness
Heart disease carries an emotional toll that’s easy to overlook. Many patients experience anxiety, fear, or depression—especially when breathlessness or chest discomfort becomes part of daily life. There is often grief, too: grief for lost independence, lost roles, or the life they imagined they’d still be living.
In hospice, we make space for those feelings. Social workers and counselors help patients and families talk openly about fears, regrets, and unfinished business. Chaplains support people of all faiths—or none at all—in exploring meaning, forgiveness, hope, and peace.
This is where Heart Month takes on a deeper meaning. We are caring not just for a failing heart muscle, but for the emotional heart that has carried decades of love, responsibility, and resilience.
Love, Relationships, and the Heart
February also reminds us that love is central to the human experience. In hospice care, we see love in its most honest forms: spouses holding hands in silence, adult children brushing a parent’s hair, old stories told and retold because they still matter.
Heart Month is a powerful reminder to say the things that matter while there is still time. “I love you.” “Thank you.” “I forgive you.” “I’m proud of you.”
Hospice teams often witness moments of reconciliation and deep connection—moments that families carry with them long after a loved one has died. These are not small things. They are, in many ways, the heart of our work.
Supporting the Family’s Heart, Too
When someone has advanced heart disease, families are affected just as deeply. Caregivers often live with constant worry—watching breathing, monitoring symptoms, sleeping lightly in case something changes overnight.
Hospice supports the family as much as the patient. We offer education, respite, emotional support, and reassurance. And after a death, bereavement services continue for months, helping families heal hearts that have been broken by loss.
A Different Kind of Heart Health Message
During February Heart Month, much of the messaging focuses on prevention: eat well, exercise, know your numbers. Those messages are important. But from a hospice perspective, we also believe in another kind of heart health—one rooted in compassion, presence, and human connection.
For those living with serious heart disease, and for the families walking alongside them, heart health may look like relief from suffering, honest conversations, meaningful time together, and a peaceful death surrounded by love.
This February, as hearts fill our calendars and storefronts, we invite you to think about the heart in all its forms. Care for it early. Listen to it often. And when the time comes that healing looks different, know that hospice is here—to care for the whole heart, all the way to the end. ❤️