Mom, 26, dies days after choosing to enter hospice following 13 years of living with kidney failure (exclusive)

Mom, 26, dies days after choosing to enter hospice following 13 years of living with kidney failure (exclusive) 
People; by Zoey Lyttle; 12/18/24 
Though she left behind a 4-year-old daughter, Sara Long told PEOPLE her feelings about death were "more certain" than they'd ever been when she started end-of-life care. “I think a lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to have a good life. And don't get me wrong, I did that too,” Sara Long, 26, told PEOPLE over the phone just shy of a week before she died at the hospice facility into which she had just recently moved. ... Long said she’s spent “the last two or three years” deliberating about her idea of a “good death.” She decided that it wasn’t just about how she would experience these last expected few weeks of her life in hospice. What Long really wanted was to be surrounded by her most precious loved ones — including her husband Justin, 32, and their 4-year-old daughter Riley Jean — but she didn't want them to watch her die while intubated and attached to hospital equipment as she was half of her life. “I just feel like if I pushed it any harder, then I was going to get to a place where it was going to be outside of my control,” said the mom of one. “I was going to wind up dying in a hospital alone, afraid, full of tubes, scared. My daughter wouldn't be able to be part of the process, and it would just be really lonely, and that's really not the goal.” Detached from the familiar yet foreign medical equipment, Long told PEOPLE she was freed from fear knowing she would only survive another couple of weeks in hospice. (She died with a week less than anticipated.) 
Editor's note: This another follow-up post to this profound young woman's story that we posted on 12/6/24 "I've already had my miracle': 26-year-old Savannah mom enters hospice care with only weeks to live" and on 12/17/24 "'You will NEVER be forgotten': 26-year-old Savannah mom in hospice care has died." This "exclusive" interview with PEOPLE magazine gives more personal background into her decision to choose hospice care.