The family took care of my mom at home on her last few months. She was still in good spirits and sharp as a tack at 96 years old. But she was barely eating - something like 200 calories a day for the last few weeks. Finally she collapsed and we got her into bed where she lasted another week or so.
Still talking but pretty out of it and in pain. The home-nurse gave her morphine, and we could give it to her as well. Looking it up, morphine is a pain killer, but IIRC it also slows down the body system, and as you up the dose to take care of more and more pain, it shuts down the body more and more too.
Obviously my mom was at the end of her days, but the increasing doses of morphine to keep her comfortable seemed a little bit to me like helping her die as well. IIRC I didn’t tell the others about my moral qualms.
Yup, good ol morphine. My late wife had been in and out of hospital several times for COPD and had been intubated several times. The last time they took the tubes out she lasted about a day before the docs said if she wanted to live she would need to be intubated again. She told me and the family nope, she wanted to go home. I told her if she knew what it meant if she was not intubated again and she said yup, I’ve had enough and asked to sign the DNR papers. She signed and hospice brought her home that evening. They gave her medication and she slept through peacefully that night. Next morning she woke up and asked for bacon and eggs and fried potatoes. I made them for her and when she got done asked for a cigarette, of course I gave her one and soon after hospice showed up to clean her up and so forth. They prescriber her morphine in a small bottle with an eye dropper, one drop on the gums was the dose. The nurse was in her room talking with her for a good while, I kinda knew what was going on. Hospice left and her already asleep, checked on her an hour later and was dead. I am sure the hospice nurse granted her wish with the morphine, I got no problem with that.