Opioids: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver

We had a very interesting discussion about the use of opioids to treat pain in connection with my upcoming hospice volunteering. The person leading the discussion noted that there are patients (and/or family members) who are hesitant to avoid asking for pain relief because they fear addiction. As the person explained to us, it's unlikely that one who is dying will become addicted. One of the primary goals within hospice is pain management, thus they start out with higher doses to get the pain under control, then scale it back.
 
Bobw235 said:
We had a very interesting discussion about the use of opioids to treat pain in connection with my upcoming hospice volunteering. The person leading the discussion noted that there are patients (and/or family members) who are hesitant to avoid asking for pain relief because they fear addiction. As the person explained to us, it's unlikely that one who is dying will become addicted. One of the primary goals within hospice is pain management, thus they start out with higher doses to get the pain under control, then scale it back.
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If I'm terminal and in great pain then I'm going to take all the pain meds I can get
 

BlunderWoman said:
If I'm terminal and in great pain then I'm going to take all the pain meds I can get
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Same here. They told us that sometimes they have to try different pain meds, that morphine, as good as it is, doesn't always do the trick for some conditions (bone cancer was cited), but that they are very good at controlling pain.
 
Bobw235 said:
Same here. They told us that sometimes they have to try different pain meds, that morphine, as good as it is, doesn't always do the trick for some conditions (bone cancer was cited), but that they are very good at controlling pain.
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Fentanyl is the most popular pain med for cancer patients with severe pain. You and I do not know what kind of pain they are going through, but I can tell you this, for someone with stage four pancreatic, lung or colon cancer and when they are near death, they are wanting over with now.
 
When I dislocated my shoulder a couple years ago, they gave me morphine, but it didn't help much, if at all. They ended up giving me something else (I don't know what it was and I didn't ask -- all I wanted was the agony to let up) which helped so they could manipulate the shoulder back in place. Once the shoulder went back in place, most of the pain was gone, thank God. That was a horribly painful experience.

Morphine did not help my niece when she was dying of colon cancer, either.
 
Butterfly said:
When I dislocated my shoulder a couple years ago, they gave me morphine, but it didn't help much, if at all. They ended up giving me something else (I don't know what it was and I didn't ask -- all I wanted was the agony to let up) which helped so they could manipulate the shoulder back in place. Once the shoulder went back in place, most of the pain was gone, thank God. That was a horribly painful experience.

Morphine did not help my niece when she was dying of colon cancer, either.
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With some types of pain morphine isn't effective until after 3 or more weeks of the same daily dosage. Morphine in pill form is tricky as it doesn't work the same from person to person. Some people's physiology makes them resistant to the way morphine works when taken in pill form. Those people often have better results with methadone, which is way cheaper but more addictive than morphine and stays in your system much longer. Methadone should never be a first choice for chronic pain relief, but if it works best on chronic pain of the terminally ill then addiction and half-life should be of no concern.
 

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