alt Hacker NewsThere 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.
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.