There is a huge unspoken blind spot for a terminal hospice patient. The medicine cabinet just opens up. My dad asked the doctor exactly how much of what he shouldn't take if he didn't want a quick easy death, and the doctor just told him. He didn't end up using it but it was a comfort to him.

▲

Loughla 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The amount of morphine available to the patients on hospice that I have known has made it very clear what the actual intent of those scripts is.

Granted, my sample size of 6 isn't great, and 3 were in terrible pain so it made sense for them, but they had ALL the opiates. . . One had liquid injectable morphine in case he couldn't swallow. He had no issues with swallowing and wasn't in pain.

I wanted to ask the doctor if the intent was to allow a calm end, but chickened out.

▲

gopher_space 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Amazing how frequently people die after they’re turned over right when the family is all together.

Amazing and appreciated.

▲

DANmode 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Open secret.

Cowardice of the system, society, that doesn’t allow practitioners to discuss this.

Leads to scary grey areas, actually.

▲

lostlogin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Cowardice of the system, society, that doesn’t allow practitioners to discuss this.

This depends on where one lives. Where I am (New Zeland), the arguments getting it into law were pretty grim.

▲

DANmode 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Serious stuff is serious!

Ignoring addressing it doesn’t make it go away - just forces it into the shadows.

	▲	lostlogin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Exactly. Abortion being the example that immediately comes to mind.