canndo
Well-Known Member
Three years ago the wife of a very good friend, a woman that wound up being a particularly good frind as well, was diagnosed with cancer.
She hated hospitals and refused to leave her house - a huge place with many bedrooms and a golf course and stables in the back - she loved her estate and didn't want to die anywhere else but at home.
She fought a decent delaying action and she never much believed in doctors or medication until the pain started getting bad, and then she was so worried that there might be a chance that she would run out pain meds that she had bottles in reserve and reserves for those bottles. She could do this because she had a very devoted and insistant husband.
Having known death and the dance that surrounds it for the living I was invited to help i any way I could - listening, and charging the family to meet this thing head on with my poor dear friend Margaret.
A bit about me and my tastes - If given the choice, I would sooner have 10 mg of hydrocodone than a quarter oz of whatever herb you could offer - that is the way I am now.
So in their home there were bottles of liquid morphine, oxydodone IR, Fentinil patches strewn all over the house and many times I was alone in that house.
I never took one pill, or a single drop. My friend (Margaret's husband) knows of my delight in such chemicals and has in the past stored up some prescription for me as a birthday gift and one evening he came to the bedroom in his house where I was staying and gave me two oxy pills from Margarets incredable collection. "maybe it will help you sleep" he said.
A week later she finally gave up and died. I was out when she quit the fight but arrived shortly afterward. She didn't want her friends to see her die so that was all right. It was one of the saddest things.
When the hospice nurse arrived she began tidying things up and asked my friend if "this was all of the pain medications left in the house" and he said yes. Whereupon I saw another sad thing - I watched the woman pour all of the pills into a diaper and pour all of the morphine over the pills while holding it over the toilet. She did this twice because all of the pills didn't fit in one diaper.
I was torn, I had lost a good friend but I also watched what would easily have been 5 years worth of opiates for me get swirled down the toilet and then I felt guilty that I was as saddened by that event as the passing of my friend.
My friend (the husband) and I went out for a cigar and for him to cry at last and somewhere in there he said "I'm sorry I didn't save some of that for you, I just didn't think".
My problem is that I can't get that entire event out of my mind even several years later. I still feel guilty for the way I felt and then I feel stupid for not having simply taken something that she would never need and something that was simply given to the fish in the ocean in the end. And then I feel guilty yet again.
She hated hospitals and refused to leave her house - a huge place with many bedrooms and a golf course and stables in the back - she loved her estate and didn't want to die anywhere else but at home.
She fought a decent delaying action and she never much believed in doctors or medication until the pain started getting bad, and then she was so worried that there might be a chance that she would run out pain meds that she had bottles in reserve and reserves for those bottles. She could do this because she had a very devoted and insistant husband.
Having known death and the dance that surrounds it for the living I was invited to help i any way I could - listening, and charging the family to meet this thing head on with my poor dear friend Margaret.
A bit about me and my tastes - If given the choice, I would sooner have 10 mg of hydrocodone than a quarter oz of whatever herb you could offer - that is the way I am now.
So in their home there were bottles of liquid morphine, oxydodone IR, Fentinil patches strewn all over the house and many times I was alone in that house.
I never took one pill, or a single drop. My friend (Margaret's husband) knows of my delight in such chemicals and has in the past stored up some prescription for me as a birthday gift and one evening he came to the bedroom in his house where I was staying and gave me two oxy pills from Margarets incredable collection. "maybe it will help you sleep" he said.
A week later she finally gave up and died. I was out when she quit the fight but arrived shortly afterward. She didn't want her friends to see her die so that was all right. It was one of the saddest things.
When the hospice nurse arrived she began tidying things up and asked my friend if "this was all of the pain medications left in the house" and he said yes. Whereupon I saw another sad thing - I watched the woman pour all of the pills into a diaper and pour all of the morphine over the pills while holding it over the toilet. She did this twice because all of the pills didn't fit in one diaper.
I was torn, I had lost a good friend but I also watched what would easily have been 5 years worth of opiates for me get swirled down the toilet and then I felt guilty that I was as saddened by that event as the passing of my friend.
My friend (the husband) and I went out for a cigar and for him to cry at last and somewhere in there he said "I'm sorry I didn't save some of that for you, I just didn't think".
My problem is that I can't get that entire event out of my mind even several years later. I still feel guilty for the way I felt and then I feel stupid for not having simply taken something that she would never need and something that was simply given to the fish in the ocean in the end. And then I feel guilty yet again.
