People often voice the fear that if they take strong painkillers now, they won’t work later. This is not true. There is no quota on painkillers that can leave you with nothing to fall back on once you’ve ‘used it up’. They will keep working. Admittedly, as I’ve already mentioned, you may need a bigger dose to get the same effect, but you can still get the same effect. So take the painkillers you need now, they will still work later.
Sometimes people are very reluctant to take a drug such as morphine because they think this is used only in the terminal stages. This is also not true. I recommended morphine often, to people with all stages of cancer, because it is a good painkiller. People who did indeed have incurable cancer often continued to take it with good effect, for many months. Don’t save strong painkillers for ‘the end’, use them when you need them.
Another reason you might have for taking insufficient painkillers to completely relieve pain is because you fear actual or anticipated side effects. We talked a bit about the actual side
effects earlier, and the need to find the balance between pain relief and side effects that is best for you. There are also the invisible, possible future side effects like kidney damage. This is
only a concern for people taking a lot of painkillers every day for many years, so it is not a real worry for you. Either you will recover from your cancer, in which case you won’t need to keep
taking painkillers or your cancer will not be cured, in which case possible kidney damage years hence is not really a concern. Either way, there’s no need to let this stop you from taking the painkillers you need now.
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