For those dying patients who have pain, it must be controlled before other symptoms can be handled effectively. Almost all patients with advanced malignancy fear both uncontrollable pain and the possibility of being so mentally obtunded from pain relief that they are rendered subhuman. They must be assured from the beginning, and shown thereafter, that it is possible to be kept pain free and alert throughout much of their terminal illness.
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Using all that morphine, aren’t patients knocked out and don’t they become addicted?
Addiction is not a problem with the terminally ill. To begin with, the course of most patients is of such a nature that addiction is irrelevant.
