The doctor found that the woman's daughter was substituting aspirin for the narcotic and taking the pain killers herself.
I would have said this was unbelievable, but I remember when my father was in his last days, dying of lung cancer. He wanted to die at home and we had hospice care and 24 hour nurses. The truly wonderful hospice nurses brought a dropper bottle of liquid morphine in the last week. But each time they came, they would check with the nurse and then hold the amber-colored bottle up to a light. I finally asked why they did that and they said that in some cases, someone in the family stole the pain-killer and so they always checked. I could not believe that someone could take pain medication from a dying relative.