morphine given too randomly in elderly patients!

I disagree. I'd rather my grandmother passs quietly and comfortable than be in pain just so i can be happy.

These organizations must be held accountable for their actions (VERBATIM) I recently experienced the same situations. Apparently, Hospice re-work the same process, tweaking it per patient and using morphine as the means to an end of the UNSUSPECTED. Hospice used are ignorance and trust within the nursing industry against us. The patients rights are being violated. Something must be done (even if it is just Civil Rights) The Doctors are funneling bodies into Hospice and Hospice is pushing their patience into eternity illegally. LETS, LET the world know, please. Why don't we do something about this. WE CAN. The media, the newspapers, the talk shows should be informed. Anyone of us could be the next victim.Please contact me


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I just experienced what you have been describing.
My grandma became unresponsive after 2 days on morphine. Her only problem was that she had labored breathing. She was put on hospice care 24/7...with the morphine. No one in my family knew she would be observed 24/7 or that she would be administered morphine. Also, we weren't educated on morphine and the risks involved. She died today. 4 days after the morphine began. She was fine except for labored breathing. This nurse (not doctor) had a care free attitude when she decided to change her level of care. She said "Oh I think her body's shutting down. I could be wrong, though. I've been wrong before." I'm heartbroken and overcome with guilt.
I do think the public needs to be informed of the risks. I would have absolutely forbidden it.

I wondered the same, why my father was given morphine.
(prostate cancer 10 years past dx, treatments exhausted)
He is not a complainer, and never heard him complain of pain at home,
except occasional arthritis pain in neck and back.
He cried out in pain as he was being moved by hospice workers.
so, given morphine and died after a week in hospice facility.

They just want to make him comfortable, we were told, so daily
morphine, it kept him quiet - no more calling for my mom at night.
Sadly, no family with him when he passed away, so I resent the morphine
speeding up the process.
He was supposed to discharge the day he died.

If loved one is admitted to inpatient hospice care,
get entire family over to say, "goodbye" right away.

Peace to all...

My father was terminal for 7years and no one told us of hospice until his last stay in the hospitol. We only had hospice for a week and they put him on morphine. He had severe COPD. This is an awful diesease and its a horrible way to die. Hospice put him on morphine however my mom gave him very little just enough to relax his breathing and it was nice. My dad wasnt fighting to breath and he could actually talk and joke with us. Hospice didnt kill my dad nor did morphine. My dad was old...78 and had lung dieseas thats what killed him. Morphine just made sure he didnt suffer. You dont go on hospice unless you are with some kind of terminal type illness. Some cancers you can recover from so some people do get better and are release from hospice. But most folks who go on hopsice it is because they are DYING. No one likes to lose a love one but its part of life. Now Im facing the same diesease that killed my dad with my mom and hospice has come in. Though they came in much sooner than with my dad. I personally think its cruel to keep someone sick and ill alive just so you dont have to deal with death, quality of life over quanity. My mom has a DNR, she doesnt even want cpr performed on her. She says she has had a good life and she is ready to go when God takes her. I am not looking forward to that day but I would rather suffer the loss of her dying rather than have her suffering here just to keep her alive for me. My mom isnt that old she is only 68. Hospice just put my mom on morphine as needed for her lung spasms. I talked to my mom about it because I was scared when the doctor said to use morphine if she needed it. But like my MOM said, Im dying and morphine is not going to kill me. If I take the morphine and I die it is because it's my time. Yes I read the side effects and yes it relaxes the muscles and the heart is a muscle,but again I dont want to watch my mom suffer and live an extra 6months in pain. That to me is just too cruel to do to her no matter how much it is going to hurt me. Hospice has been and is a blessing to my family. To switch gears a little bit my grandad was 96yrs old when he died he fell and broke a hip and had to go to a nursing home. Before that he worked his little farm up until the fall. 3months in a nursing home and he was dead. Some say being in a nursing home killed him, and Im sure knowing he would never be able to go back to his farm he just stopped fighting and let nature take his course and though I was sad, good god he was 96! we are not immortal and we should never strive to be. So you can place the blame of your love one on someone else but truth is most were old and or sick and God took them on.

I’ve read a lot of your complaints against hospice. And wanted to add MY mother had hospice. She was 55 yrs young. She is now gone. I work in hospice and respect and understand a lot about what your going through but I ask you as well as some of my PT families, When your fam member is in their upper ages in life if they break a hip crack a rib the % of them getting better is 45% in some cases based on their quality of life before the injury,ie smoke, drugs,eating habits.So many people blame their parents/LOVE ONES death on the roxinal/Morphine.I’ve seen in my 3 yrs of working as a hospice nurse family members who passed in LOTS of pain. And I’ve seen family members pass peacefully. I’ve seen family members on Bolus pump with a fentynal patch at a 100 mics and there was little to no effect. Yes there are some nurses out there who will give meds just to keep the family member from yelling out in pain but. I trully believe that if you want your family member to NOT have these opioides then you have the right to stop AALLLLL meds,please do not blame nurses for giving meds that if YOU have attorny of power you can cease and desist all hospice aid/cc coverage.I once had a family member accuse the meds for keeping their family member sleep all the time,In a lot of cases it’s the dx of the disease that has them in the comatose state they are in ,not the meds,and if a PT has a failure to thrive that’s even harder to cure cause it’s something that’s personal with that Pt ,THEY have to WANT to survive. I would have loved to have my mother around alittle longer but at what Q.O L? would she be in pain, non responsive? Of course I know you love your mother, father,aunt uncle what have you but people why would you be selfish .again I’m speaking from both sides. Being on the nursing side to being that family member who had a ton of questions for my own mother when she was on hospice.please do not look at hospice as the scope of practice that kills family members cause with as many of you out there who think badly about hospice there are others who don’t.
REMEMBER You have the right to check meds, decline meds, ask questions, but remember it’s NOT about YOU! It’s about the comfort of your family member .

The morphine is supposed to make it more comfortable for someone who is dying which is why they give it to the elderly. Yes, it may help in their death, but it only helps by not prolonging the inevitable and making that person's last days more comfortable. Some people don't agree with it, but if you don't, don't put a family member on hospice. Hospice is only for someone who is dying. If he had kidney problems, his kidneys might have been failing and he would have eventually died from toxicity of waste staying in his body. Maybe the morphine wasn't for him, but maybe it made the last of his life more comfortable. To be able to understand the whole situation and form a better opinion, you need to know and realize how serious of a health condition he may have had and what his body was going through. Also, statistics of an elderly person surviving after breaking a hip is less than 50% because they are not as healthy and their bodies have a harder time recovering and taking that kind of stress.

My Mom, age 90, is on hospice right now and they are pushing the morphine (roxinal) drops and want her to take it often. We are pushing back on that as advil seems to do fine for her. I am so glad to read these testimonials and so sorry for all the suffering each of you and your families have experienced. Please be assured your posts have helped me and my family greatly to be more aware of this hospice practice.

My mother is 95 years old and has always been very active and healthy except for dementia, osteoporosis and mild arthritis. Three years ago, she suffered a heart attack or stroke and had pneumonia. She was hospitalized and her doctor told us that only a miracle would save her. My mother survived, but was put on hospice and sent home to die. A hospice nurse arrived that evening with a huge package of morphine for family members to administer to my mother to "alleviate her pain and stop her from suffering". They will provide the morphine, but will not administer it. They wipe their hands clean by convincing the family that the patient is in extreme pain and it would be cruel to let them suffer without assistance and give the drugs to the family to administer. My siblings believe anything they are told and are so easily convinced, I believe they were an easy target for the hospice staff. My siblings are so obsessed with their own pain, they agreed to give my mother the morphine. Because my mother has always been a faithful believer in God, has been strong willed and healthy, I did not believe she was ready to die. All my family members were influenced by the hospice nurses and were convinced that she was in her last days, and it was her time to go. My daughter and I refused to be convinced and because we are Christians, we began praying for God's will to be done. We asked God to protect her, heal her if it was His will, and God answered our prayers. I believe in miracles because she was completely healed and she bounced back to normal. Everyone was in disbelief because they were all ready to send her on her "journey" to the grave, as the hospice staff told them. During the past few weeks, my mother began having problems breathing and complained of pain in her chest. Because she remained on hospice, we could not take her to the doctor without their permission. The hospice program demands that we call them first. I called hospice and spoke to a nurse who attempted to diagnose her over the telephone by what my mother's caretaker was telling her. I demanded that she go see her that day and not diagnose her via the telephone. The hospice nurse finally agreed to go see her that day and said that she may have suffered a stroke but also seemed to have a slight cold. However, she said it was not bronchitis or very serious. The nurse said she would go back in two days to check her and would be able to tell us whether she had suffered a stroke or not. Two days later, the nurse called me and told me my mother had not suffered a stroke, but it was possible someone had given her medication that had not agreed with her. Hospice then brought her a new hospital bed, oxygen tanks and within a few days said her "body was shutting down" and we should begin administering morphine. My mother fell off the new bed because it was so much higher than her regular bed and possibly because she had been given some morphine by that time. She continued to feel ill, refusing to eat, and we thought it was because of the fall. I went to see her two days later on Friday night and she was coherent and talking although she complained of pain in her chest. I helped her drink Ensure because she was refusing to eat anything. I suspect that she was given morphine in her food that night (for pain) because although she loves sweets, she was making faces when my sister spoon fed her some pudding. My sister told her to eat the pudding because it was good. My mother told her "It's not so good, you eat it" and only had a few spoons of the pudding. By Saturday she was incoherent and barely talking. By Sunday, my mother was comatose but breathing. My sister was told by hospice nurses to call all family members because "her body was shutting down" and she was dying. Within a few hours the parking lot was full of cars and the house was crowded with all my siblings, their spouses, grandchildren, great grandchildren and some close friends. My sister called a priest to administer her last rites. That night I stayed with my mother and prayed for God to do his will and not let her suffer. She was breathing and did not seem to be in any pain. The following morning, I went to her room to give her water with a sponge and she was squeezing my hand to let me know she could hear me and was biting down on the sponge attempting to drink water. She was squinting her eyes to let me know that she could understand me. I decided to look for the morphine and flush it down the toilet to prevent them from giving her any more. I found it and hid it in my car. A couple of hours later my siblings arrived, and my sister went to the cabinet to look for the morphine so she could give her some. I told her she would not find it because I had taken it. That day the hospice people came to check her vitals and amazingly her vital signs were excellent. I asked them if we could hospitalize her so a doctor could check to see why she was unresponsive and almost comatose. The hospice nurse told me that we had to let her go on her "journey" and she would be poked and mistreated in the hospital. They also told me she may not survive the ride in an ambulance. My daughter-in-law who has a degree in biology told me that my mother's body was not shutting down because her vital signs would not be what they were. She told me that we were running out of time and if we wanted to try to save her life we would have to put her on an iv immediately or she would die of starvation and/or dehydration. We called her doctor to ask for advice and he told us to take her to the hospital and he would administer the iv there. The few grandchildren that were there, one of my sisters, and I made the decision to call an ambulance to transport her to the hospital immediately. Once the paramedics administered the iv, my mother opened her eyes and was attempting to raise her head. In the emergency room, we were informed that she has pneumonia and needed antibiotics. They also informed us that because she had gone almost three days without water and food, her sodium level was dangerously high and if we had waited any longer, she would have died. The next morning, my mother was wide awake and talking. I walked into the hospital and she gave me a big smile and I told her I loved her. She told me "I love you too" in a barely audible voice. I was ecstatic and I kissed her and held her and thanked her for getting better. If we had believed the Kevorkian employees of the hospice program, we would have euthanized my mother with morphine. It has been three days now that she has been in the hospital, and she is improving every day. Her doctor told us she might be released to go home as early as this weekend. I am disgusted with the hospice programs who are attempting to euthanize all our elderly people. I have several friends who cry every time they talk about how their mothers were given the morphine by hospice programs and were basically put to sleep like animals. I will continue fighting for my precious mother until God decides to call her home on HIS terms. I will always stand firm in believing that God is in control. I wish our government would not let these criminals kill innocent people by brainwashing their families to believe that they are helping their loved ones by managing their pain. My mother is still not out of the woods because of the pneumonia, but if God does decide to take her home, I will not have to live with the guilt of never knowing whether we could have done something tohelp her or not. My beautiful mother even looks younger because her skin was nourished with the iv's and her skin tone looks great. I hope and pray that by people reading my story, they will immediately take their loved ones of those horrible hospice programs and save their lives. If they continue to bother my family insisting that my mother belongs on hospice because of her "terminal illness" like they tried to tell me, I will seek legal counsel. The only "terminal" diagnosis they could reveal to me was her dementia. I have never heard that dementia was considered a terminal medical condition that requires euthanizing a patient.

My father is 82 years old and he's always been active and healthy except for palalysis. He was having that for 6 and half years and the doctor hav'nt really find anything that may cause his palalysis.Last year he went for an x-ray and they send us a letter saying that he's having a lung cancer just because we told them that he was a heavy smoker before.Last month it was a sunday,6th of June we took him to the hospital because he's feeling sick.When we get to the hospital there were a nurse and a doctor waiting for us in a x-ray room because it was an ambulance that took us to the hospital. They told me to go wait outside the room while they x-ray him and after a while they called me back in and told me that my dad's blood pressure is low and he is having a lung cancer infection which is infected his chest and they don't think that he's gonna live that long.When i looked at him there is nothing wrong with him ,he's still look fine ,active and he looks like he's still have more years to live.They asked me to called the rest of the family to come spend time with him.On that sunday night everyone came to the hospital and they surprise to see my father still looked normal.They tried to test him by asking him about our name he still remember everyone's name and face so talked and jokes with him .Later on a nurse came in and ask me to ask my dad whether he 's having any pain.He told me that he is but i know its because he was lying on his back for too long, so i told the nurse that he is and she told me that he will give him morphine to ease the pain .After 6 hours they give him another injection at the side of his abdomen.I left around 11 o'clock that nite while my mum and my brother still there with him talking,when i woke up the next day my brother call us to come to the hospital because my day is not waking up again :'( :'( :'( ..I can't believe that so we rush to the hospital and i saw my dad facing the roof with his eye close . mouth open and a very noisy breathing . i called my brother and talked with him and he told me that since they been giving him morphine he was slowly dying and after 2 days he passed away :'( :'( :'( With in my heart heart i can feel that something is wrong . I don't think that it was my dad's time to go but i blame the morphine because if they didn't give him that he's still alive by now.I am still devasted and morning. :'( :'( :'( Morphine is not a pain killer but a killer! Becareful everyone dont make that mistake i make to my father... :'( :'(

Jeez, I feel sick reading all this. I had a suspicion that the morphine the doctor was giving my elderly mum was making her weaker, but after reading these I am full sure now. She only had two injections for the pain. After the first one we couldnt get her up off the chair to put her to bed. Up until that she was walking around. Next morning we couldnt get her up out of the bed to get dressed as normal, so we called the doc again. At lunch time he gave her another injection, she was dead by 5 oclock. She just went to sleep. She had bowel problems and a pain. Her death cert says perforated bowel. But She didnt even last til my brother got home to see her. It all happened too fast altogether. But what can I do now. Nothing. She would probablyy have died anyway, she was 91, and they wouldnt have operated, she was too old. But I now know it was the morphine killed her so quickly.

I lost my beloved Mother who was 90 years old, on August 17, 2010. In July, she had a pacemaker put in, but it still didn't stop the shortness of breath. After several chest x-rays of not revealing anything except a bit of pneumonia, she was admitted to the hospital the first of August with extreme chest pain. Only then did a x-ray reveal she had congestive heart failure. Lasix made her pain go away, but yet the doctor started her on morphine every 4 hours for 4 days. The result was disasterous. She became violent and no one could touch her, it took 10 people to place her on a guerney when she was dismissed from the hospital. She passed away 12 days later, I will always believe the morphine contributed to her passing. Hospice was with her to the end and never once administered morphine to her, simply because I would not allow it. They didn't argue with me, as they knew what had happened to her while in the hospital. Don't let anyone in the medical field tell you, morphine it out of one's system in 4 hours, it is not!

My mother went into the hosptal here 2 weeks for chest pains. All the blood work and tests were good and all she had was  a  pulled chest muscle. They gave her morphene in the hospital and who knows what else.  She is 79 years old and has scolosis, and other health issues and only weight 89 pounds. I would think there  would be another  way to ease the pain. Once she left the pathetic hospital, they gave her Loritab pain pills.  These really messed her up.  Now she takes Tylenol3  and it does the trick to ease her pain. Health care professionals  seem to not know everyhing and that really pissed me off.  The side affects are still wearing off from that one lousy night.

My wonderful father inlaw just passed 2 months ago he was in the hospital had surgery for colon cancer which was successful when he was ready to come home  his heart rate dropped so they wanted to keep him a little longer and gave him morphine a little after 9:30pm and within 2 hours he had passed away so sad things just don't seem right any advice please

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 It has messED    my mother up since the day she left the damn hospital.  There has to be another way. It just haS TO.

 I just pray and hope she gets better each day.