Replies

Thank you.

I’m just saying that those who are dying may need pain meds to make it easier, ease the pain. Dying can be really painful from what I’ve heard.

The whole Kevorkian thing makes me uneasy because it makes taking a life ok. Like you posted, it makes a right to die a duty to die, especially when the gov’t/national healthcare is involved.

I’m probably not making myself clear here but I’m trying. My mom was almost 86 and she was dying and just needed morphine to ease her pain. She thought she could do the pain without any help/meds, and did for close to a year, then that Friday morning asked me to make the pain stop so I called hospice, put her on hospice to get the morphine. She lived with us and died at home.

The organ that failed on my mom was her skin. She had pain all over her body. She was in hospice and so was able to have morphine. We were told to keep it at a level where she didn’t have pain. We/actually I, did. I’m sure that had she not had the morphine she would have lived longer and certainly have had excruciating pain. The morphine let her relax and her last words were to Jesus, “open up this door and let me in.” I still wonder if I gave her too many of those little straws. But I’m at peace with it. God created the poppy for this reason. She was happy and at peace when she died.

Bless you, Twink, for giving your mom tender loving care. And bless Hospice for getting her the morphine when she needed it.

I'm gong to repeat something I said in a previous post, which had an inexplicable typo (or computer-o) which left out half of a sentence and changed the meaning. (Let's see if it comes out right this time :o)

It was at leat 25 years ago that Dr. Jose Espinosa, an expert in geriatric and terminal cancer care, testified that in all his years of practice he had never seen "intractable pain" --- but he had seen "intractable doctors and nurses."

And if this was true 25 years ago, I daresay it's even more true now: acupuncture, narcotics, and other pain relief exists which can truly eliminate severe pain in terminal patients. (I say "in terminal patients" because some of these measures would cause side-effects which would not be acceptable for non-terminal patients --- for instance, a pain med that destroys liver function in 8 months --- whereas that is perfectly appropriate for a person who has not that long to live.)

I have heard that some doctors hesitate to give "cocktails" of narcotic meds at effective doses because they are afraid of legal scrutiny of their use of controlled substances.

In any case, it makes me angry that there are hospices which lag behind in effective comfort care. Here's a good thing to read: the article on the left side of the page about better approaches to end-of-life care.