She was a friend, a really good friend, who died much too soon. And if dying young wasn’t tragic enough, she died a slow, agonizing death, in and out of consciousness for weeks, all the while begging for someone to stop the pain. Her doctors warned that increasing the morphine could suppress her respiration, thus hastening her death. But the pain had become too great. At that point, in constant and excruciating pain, she just wanted it to stop, no matter what.
With trepidation, her doctor ordered a higher dose of intravenous morphine. As the medication took affect, her face, twisted in agony, began to relax. Lying in a hospital bed, by now weak and frail and wasting away, she gazed for a long moment at her husband and two small children standing by her side and, for the first time in days, was able to smile. And then, she breathed her last.
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