Surgery is what u do to correct knee and hip problems.
Pain pills was not the solution.
He was loaded with cocktails.
It sounds like he wasn’t willing to rest his bones and was taking an excessive load of pain pills to try to keep moving on and on and on, even as his bone condition got worse.
That’s maybe understandable for a fellow whose life was driven from fame, but it’s also the pride that goes before a fall. We’re mortal and, short of the rare divine miracle, we don’t just leap up after taking a serious hit.
In this case I’d say the pills were actually being used to a purpose. It’s the purpose itself that was wrongheaded. He didn’t need this sort of heroic pain relief for the situation he was in — and by the way I would never ever begrudge it to the terminally ill, as if utter pharmaceutical virtue on the way out were the cat’s meow. That’s hyper-puritanical and wrongheaded. But Tom was in a different situation. He needed rest.