Opioids Morphine prescribed to help with breathing!

[k.dre]

My mom is dying from cancer, it's very advanced at this point as it's metasticized and spread throughout a lot of her body. When my dad was telling me about the medication she is on, he mentioned that she takes morphine for pain as well as to help with her breathing. I didn't mention to him that morphine and other opiates cause respiratory depression bc he knows my struggles with drug addiction and I hate sounding knowledgeable about drugs.

As my mom has gotten worse you can hear her struggle more and more to breathe well especially after she has done any sort physical exertion. And by physical exertion, in her case, that includes being assisted in standing up and then using her walker to go to the dinner table or getting to the bathroom.

This past week she started full time oxygen and my dad again mentioned morphine to help with her breathing. Still in disbelief, I looked it up, and sure enough, it is most definitely used to help temper breathing, most typically in pallative care patients.

This paragraph helped to explain it me well:

Respiratory depression sounds scary, doesn’t it? All it means is that your respiratory rate (how many breaths you take in a minute) is decreased. Our normal respiratory rate is usually somewhere between 12-20 breaths in a minute. If you are suffering with an end-stage disease process and your respiratory rate is at 30 or 28 or 20 breaths a minute and you feel like you are having a hard time breathing, we’d like to relieve that. If we are successful and you are breathing comfortably again, this is exactly what we want. If your respiratory rate goes down to 16 or 14 in the process, then morphine reduced your respiratory rate. Remember that a ‘normal’ respiratory rate is 12-20 breaths per minute. So, we need to keep this concept in context when we discuss respiratory depression.

In my mom's case, her breathing rate substantially is increased for 2 reasons, 1) the anxiety related to the pain. When her pain kicks in it is unbearable and causes her vitals to shoot up, 2) tumor in her lungs makes in generally harder to get a deep breath.

I'm not asking any questions here, I just felt like sharing some newly found knowledge because I never thought opiates would be used to reduce and moderate breathing. It's ironic, the "side effect" of opiates that are most often associated with killing a person are also a desirable side effect.

Here's a link to the full article I quoted above: http://www.qualityoflifecare.com/?p=264

 

[Oxycondone]

I'm sorry to hear about your mum's predicament. Thank you for sharing this information, it is interesting.

 

[TheLostBoys]

Sorry to heat about your mom bro....Morphine is a great drug & should be prescribed more often.

 

[A4Anxiety]

My mom is dying from cancer, it's very advanced at this point as it's metasticized and spread throughout a lot of her body. When my dad was telling me about the medication she is on, he mentioned that she takes morphine for pain as well as to help with her breathing. I didn't mention to him that morphine and other opiates cause respiratory depression bc he knows my struggles with drug addiction and I hate sounding knowledgeable about drugs.

As my mom has gotten worse you can hear her struggle more and more to breathe well especially after she has done any sort physical exertion. And by physical exertion, in her case, that includes being assisted in standing up and then using her walker to go to the dinner table or getting to the bathroom.

This past week she started full time oxygen and my dad again mentioned morphine to help with her breathing. Still in disbelief, I looked it up, and sure enough, it is most definitely used to help temper breathing, most typically in pallative care patients.

This paragraph helped to explain it me well:



In my mom's case, her breathing rate substantially is increased for 2 reasons, 1) the anxiety related to the pain. When her pain kicks in it is unbearable and causes her vitals to shoot up, 2) tumor in her lungs makes in generally harder to get a deep breath.

I'm not asking any questions here, I just felt like sharing some newly found knowledge because I never thought opiates would be used to reduce and moderate breathing. It's ironic, the "side effect" of opiates that are most often associated with killing a person are also a desirable side effect.

Here's a link to the full article I quoted above: http://www.qualityoflifecare.com/?p=264

hey dre.. Im so very sorry to hear about your mother.. God Bless you and your family... my father just passed away too from emphysema.. he was in the ER for 58 days hooked up to a ventalator to help with his breathing.. and he too was given morphine to help with breathing..

I'll tell you exactly why the morphine is given.. a normal person with healthy lungs breathes at a rate of about 12-20 breaths per second.. this is known as respiratory rate.. Those who have chronic lung disease breathe anywhere from 20-40 breaths per minute.. This is because the lungs are struggling to function as they are riddled with tumors/tar/phlegm etc.. and this is what causes fast smaller breaths instead of a nice slow deep breath.. The morphine is given in hopes to slow down the breathing.. and relax the body so that other complicatons dont arise..

Fast breathing can lead to a faster heart beat.. or irregular heart beat which is known as atrial fibrillation... which can then bring forth cardiac problems.. The faster breathing will also lead to the body being in a restless state... and at this time every second of rest will greatly help your mom.. faster breathing could also lead to digestion problems as the body cannot pass a regular bowel movement with the body working in overdrive..

so you see.. the morphine is administered to slow down the breathing to help relax the body so God forbid.. your mom does not have multiple organ failure..

I will keep your family in my prayers..

all the best,
Armond

 

[smackcraft]

sorry about that

on a note i thought that opiates had a bad effect on the respiratory system ?

When you look at the methadone hand book V10 it says it can be bad for times like winter cos if and open to more chance of things like chest coughs etc ?

maybe its different with meth to morphine ?

 

[mr. mudd]

sorry to hear about your mother. I went through the same thing with mine. the morphine relaxes the pain and thus improves breathing at first, but as you increase the dose (as the pain increases) you get serious respiratory depression and eventually overdose. I'm pretty sure that my mother died from the morphine, but no one in their right mind would lower the dose and allow the person to suffer in their last days.

I remember being very angry that she couldn't get pharmaceutical grade heroin because I thought that'd make her more lucid.

spend as much time with her as you can.

 

[bignbrown]

sorry to hear man,

another thing with morphine is it vasodilates the main arterys/veins going into the heart, which i guess helps too