It was draining on us
Pressure to medicate
Caregiving may be cultural
It's about awareness
He wanted to be clear
We had a lot of pressure to use pain medication the last three weeks of his life. And my father kept requesting that it not be given. A lot of times we were given leading questions like, "You don't want to see him suffer, do you?" How do we answer that? Of course we don't want to see him suffer, but on the other hand, the alternative was definitely a violation of my father and also a violation of some things that we had felt were very important to us. And it was real difficult to turn them down every time that would be asked. But I think it was the norm to offer pain medication and have it accepted so it was difficult, I think, for the other care providers outside of our family to understand that and to support our choice.