Methadone = Crack

Ever visit a nursing home and see the vacuous stares of the elderly stricken with Alzheimer’s?  I distinctly remember visiting my 92 year old step-grandmother at one of the “nicer” facilities on Long Island and being shocked by the sea of wheelchairs and doped up geriatrics filling the rec room.  Each one was different: each one was equally sad. 

One man cried out for his mother.  Another woman spoke gibberish – pieces and parts of words that might mix into cohesive speech if they were arranged differently.  There was one lady who just sat with a laundry basket on her lap, folding and unfolding the clothes endlessly.  Another tiny black woman rocked a baby-doll as if it were a real child.  I couldn’t help but think that I’d rather be dead than where they were.

My latest visit with my dad had me thinking the same thing.  The methadone they have him on had him babbling and hallucinating.  At one point, we couldn’t seem to rouse him after he had dozed off.  After nearly 10 minutes of shaking him and patting his face, we finally got a response… I thought for sure, that was it.  But, he bounced back into consciousness… sort of.

The methadone makes him vomit.  Like all heroin products (natural or synthetic) it makes you puke.  So, they gave him some other stuff to prevent the vomiting, but it doesn’t help too much.  Additionally, the methadone makes him twitchy… like a crack addict.  His fingers twitch like he’s trying to point to something, his jaw twitches like he’s trying to speak but can’t get bodily cooperation, and he jumps in his sleep quite a lot.  It would all be worth it (almost) if the pain was gone.  But, it’s not.  On a scale of 1 – 10, his pain at rest is still a 4; in motion, it’s a 7. 

He told us he had to use the bathroom, so we tried to get him out of bed, but there’s no place to grab or push or pull him that doesn’t cause excruciating pain.  His shoulders, hips, and ribs are covered with cancer, so transitioning from a sitting to standing position (or vice versa) is torture.  It even hurts him when we hug him.  Talk about heartbreaking.

He has 300 pills of methadone in a pharmacy bottle.  If I was him, during my 5 minutes of lucidity every 2 hours, I’d reach over and down the entire bottle.  Where’s Dr. Kevorkian when you need him?