By Steve LeBel
One of the most crucial—yet often overlooked—vulnerabilities in cryonics is the period between your imminent clinical death and the initiation of cryopreservation procedures. During this critical window, any delay can result in ischemic damage and compromise your future revival prospects. Even with well-documented plans and prepaid arrangements, too many cryonics members rely on informal local contacts or simply hope for a fast response from emergency standby providers or a local funeral home.
The Problem: Time Is Not On Our Side
Cryonics protocols work best when action is taken before and immediately after legal death. Every minute counts. Unfortunately, even if you’ve made all the right arrangements with Cryonics Institute (CI) and Suspended Animation (SA), you are still dependent on local responders (friends, family, EMS, or unprepared caregivers) to close the gap. Too often, they:
- Don’t know who to call
- Lack understanding of the urgency
- Fail to notify key organizations in time
- The pronouncement of death is often delayed
The Hospice Solution
After speaking with Bob Cahill, the recently retired CEO of Hospice of Michigan (one of the largest hospices in the U.S.), I learned more about how hospice organizations can play a vital role in addressing this gap—if you set them up properly in advance.
Here’s how hospice can help:
- Continuity and Readiness: They maintain electronic records of your medical information, including your cryonics wishes and contact instructions.
- 24/7 Clinical Oversight: Some hospices around the country (including Hospice of Michigan) offer 24/7 access for you and your support system. In larger organizations, these phones are typically staffed by nurses and physicians for top quality responses to urgent conditions.
- Onsite Personnel: Most hospices provide onsite staff to you at home and monitor your condition. They are highly qualified to know when it’s time to call your emergency standby provider like SA.
- Expertise: Hospices understand the support and management required at end-of-life. And they are more likely to recognize when death is imminent.
- Emergency Notification: Hospices can immediately call Cryonics Institute, Suspended Animation, or your funeral home with full understanding of what needs to happen.
- Death Pronouncement: They can also facilitate a prompt death pronouncement—often the biggest delay point.
Eligibility for Hospice / Palliative Care
There is a distinction between hospice care and palliative care. Both of them provide medical care. In the case of hospice, patients must typically have a diagnosis indicating a life expectancy of six months or less. Palliative care, on the other hand, provides specialized medical care focused on relieving symptoms, pain, and stress associated with serious illness – regardless of the patient’s prognosis or life expectancy, a much lower threshold.
Depending on your situation, you may not be eligible for hospice or even palliative care at this time. It is still important to research your options and make a plan now. Waiting until you find yourself in a serious decline is not the time to make these decisions.
What to Know About Hospice / Palliative Care
There are about 4,500 hospice organizations in USA. Some are quite small and have limited resources. You are looking for:
- Larger hospice care providers because they are more likely to have a 24/7 call center with trained staff (nurses and physicians) taking the calls. They are most likely to have access to your medical records so they know what you need and want.
- Hospice services are covered by Medicare. Patients rarely have out-of-pocket costs.
- Look for large hospice providers that offer palliative care services as part of their continuum of care.
- Starting palliative care with a provider whose primary business is hospice care means they can refer you to their hospice branch quickly when the time comes.
- Palliative (only) providers (especially hospitals) offer palliative care as an add-on service that may not transition smoothly into hospice care.
Recognition of Imminent Death
How do you know when you’re about to die? After all, none of us have ever had it happen before. That’s where hospice comes in. Their staff have great experience with end-of-life scenarios and are adept at recognizing when death is coming. This expertise helps them know when to contact emergency standby providers such as SA. This gives your provider time to mobilize and arrive at your bedside where they can deliver all-important services and prepare transport to the cryonics facility.
The Death Pronouncement Issue
Ischemia is the lack of blood flow and oxygen to tissues, most importantly the brain. Tissue damage begins as early as 5 minutes after death. Getting your body released to cryonicists as soon as possible is critical. But that can’t happen until the pronouncement of death.
Generally, this is the standard practice when someone dies. The person discovering the death must call 911. This triggers the EMS (Emergency Medical Service) who then go to the body. They may attempt resuscitation unless a valid DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order is presented; if death is obvious and irreversible, they may stop interventions. They cannot declare death – they must contact local medical control (an on-call physician who supervises the EMS). Only a licensed physician or medical examiner can issue the legal death pronouncement. Police often arrive and investigate, especially if the death was “unattended” (no doctor overseeing care). The police may contact the medical examiner, triggering further delays or even an autopsy. Once the medical examiner or attending physician gives approval, an official death pronouncement is finally made. Only then can the body be legally transported.
The hospice patient can have a different experience. Hospice nurses (RNs) in most states can be authorized to legally pronounce death (not to certify it, which must be done by the attending physician or medical examiner). They can do this because 1) the patient is in hospice care, 2) there is a DNR order, and 3) the death occurs in the home or hospice facility, not in a hospital. No waiting for EMS, police, or the medical examiner. This faster death pronouncement significantly accelerates the critical cryonics timeline.
What to Do Now
If you want to integrate hospice/palliative care into your suspension plan, follow these steps:
1. Research Hospices in Advance
- Contact a reputable hospice provider (one with 24/7 medical access).
- If you have health issues, then review their palliative vs. hospice services.
- If your health doesn’t qualify you for enrollment, let them know you’re interested in learning about them for the future, and you’ll be advising your family and others about your preference for them when the time comes.
2. Confirm Their Capability
- Make sure the hospice / palliative care organization understands and agrees to participate in a time-sensitive response.
- Ask how they keep your records (including your Emergency Contact sheet) and whether it’s accessible during a 2 a.m. death call.
3. Create Your Cryonics Protocol Sheet (Emergency Contact Sheet)
- Your name and CI membership number
- Contacts for Cryonics Institute, Suspended Animation LLC, and your funeral home
- Specific instructions:
- Upon death or imminent death, call these numbers immediately. Time is critical to preserve viability.
- Expedite the declaration of death.
4. Coordinate With CI, SA, and Your Funeral Home
- Let CI and SA know which hospice you’ve chosen.
- Ask if they’d like to send any standing instructions or authorization forms to the hospice.
- Make sure your funeral home (i.e., urgent transport provider) is also in the loop.
5. Keep Everything Updated
- Review your plan (including your Cryonics Protocol Sheet) annually.
- Make sure your designated Power of Attorney for Healthcare and family know the hospice’s role and how that fits into your cryonics plan.
Why This Matters
When your death occurs, it’s too late to troubleshoot. You need a trusted medical entity ready to act instantly, with full knowledge of your cryonics arrangements. Hospice can be that entity. By planning now, you greatly improve the odds of a rapid, well-executed transition to cryopreservation.
Using hospice resources is low-cost, reliable strategy already embedded in the healthcare system. It’s one of the smartest additions you can make to your cryonics planning.
If you have questions or want help discussing your hospice strategy, reach out to me. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned.
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About the Author
Steve LeBel is a retired hospital CEO and an advocate for cryonics preparedness and planning. He is signed up with the Cryonics Institute and works to bridge the gap between end-of-life care and timely cryopreservation.
📧 Email: steve@stevelebel.com
🌐 Website: www.stevelebel.com
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I had fun last night.
was invited to do a talk about my books at the 
Last night I had a chance to talk about my writing and my books. It was a fun reminder of how I got started on this path of writing. But you know what really thrilled me? It was seeing how many people actually stopped by to see me. I even met people I’d never met before except through email. That has to be one of the most interesting things about writing: you get to meet people you’d never have met otherwise. And I love it.
How cool is this?
Muskegon Center for the Arts / Red Lotus Gallery will be hosting a Book Signing Event for Steve LeBel and his new book.
It has been 15 months since I broke my leg.
This produced an interesting problem. With every step, my weight went into the rod, which was bolted to the upper part of my leg. Since the bone edges still weren’t touching, the rod ground it’s way down through the inside of my tibia. In June, when looking at the x-rays, I noticed the rod was about to break through into my ankle joint.
My new doctor suggested that instead of redoing everything, we might try removing the last set of screws (the one that holds the rod tight to leg bone above the break. He said the tibia in that region is softer than the ankle, and the rod will be able to move up toward the knee instead of down into the ankle. I agreed and in July, we removed the last of the screws.
We agreed to give it another three months. During that time, I asked for a ‘bone stimulator’. This device uses electrical pulses and magnetic fields to wake up your body and get it to start generating bone matter. (I’m glad I don’t plan on fathering any more children.) My doc wrote the prescription and my insurance paid for it.
Okay, okay. Don’t give me a hard time for saying, “Mission Accomplished.” I know it ain’t. But it feels like I just passed a big hurdle and from now on, it’s much smaller steps.
The natural thing to consider at this point is submitting my book to literary agents or publishers to get it published. The more I read, the more I question this assumption. The process of finding a literary agent, who then will try to find a publisher, who will then eventually publish can take a very long time. It is common for this to take two years or longer.