My mother is currently in the hospital, terminal according to doctors due to an attempt to treat her lung cancer resulting in radiation/chemo therapy. 6+ months later, we took her to the ER because we suspected an infection like pneumonia, and she is on 70+ liters of oxygen due to severe scarring (irreversible) and struggles to maintain O2 saturation in the 80% range.
My concern is they have her on IV Drip Morphine at 4 mg per hour. This has since had her largely sedated and almost completely non-responsive. She is 59 years old with COPD (emphesema) and lung cancer, but was mostly functional, responsive, eating, talking, etc. That is, until we started the IV morphine drip at 2 mg/hr, then to 4 mg/hr. She seems like she wants to fight for her life and today eating was impossible due to excessive sedation. She lifts her eyebrows and mumbles a bit on occasion, sometimes seemingly randomly but she gives the impression she wants to fight to the end.
My question is should we decrease the Morphine drip to 2 mg? The plus side is it suppresses her cough effectively (which severely lowers her O2 saturation% with too little morphine), the negative is it makes her seem comatose, totally non-responsive with seemingly random eyebrow lifts and mumbles. We think she is determined to to try to fight for her life to the end. Doctors are surprised she is still alive.
I want her to be as comfortable as possible if she is indeed hopeless. But I want her to be able to do what she desires. She hasn't ate a single bite for 24 hours and she seemed mostly fine (eating, talking, etc) before they started the 2mg/hr IV drip, then increased to 4mg/hr drip.
Will someone please provide some guidance given these circumstances? I want to decrease her morphine drip to 2mg/hr. What do you fine people think? Thanks so much, I quick reply is really urgent if you can help our family in this crisis.
My concern is they have her on IV Drip Morphine at 4 mg per hour. This has since had her largely sedated and almost completely non-responsive. She is 59 years old with COPD (emphesema) and lung cancer, but was mostly functional, responsive, eating, talking, etc. That is, until we started the IV morphine drip at 2 mg/hr, then to 4 mg/hr. She seems like she wants to fight for her life and today eating was impossible due to excessive sedation. She lifts her eyebrows and mumbles a bit on occasion, sometimes seemingly randomly but she gives the impression she wants to fight to the end.
My question is should we decrease the Morphine drip to 2 mg? The plus side is it suppresses her cough effectively (which severely lowers her O2 saturation% with too little morphine), the negative is it makes her seem comatose, totally non-responsive with seemingly random eyebrow lifts and mumbles. We think she is determined to to try to fight for her life to the end. Doctors are surprised she is still alive.
I want her to be as comfortable as possible if she is indeed hopeless. But I want her to be able to do what she desires. She hasn't ate a single bite for 24 hours and she seemed mostly fine (eating, talking, etc) before they started the 2mg/hr IV drip, then increased to 4mg/hr drip.
Will someone please provide some guidance given these circumstances? I want to decrease her morphine drip to 2mg/hr. What do you fine people think? Thanks so much, I quick reply is really urgent if you can help our family in this crisis.
my condolences to you and your family