Olivia Bouquet
Lilly is a seventy nine year old white female with an extensive medical history including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), osteopenia, osteoarthritis, multiple recurrent muscle strains, sciatica and chronic lumbago. Due to all her ailments she has required increasingly more medication and high doses of narcotics to manage her multi-factorial pain. Her PCP, having reached her maximum prescribing comfort in response to the recent awareness of narcotics abuse and overuse in the United States, referred her to pain management. Upon review of her history, pain management quickly refused to accept Lilly as a patient labelling her an addict. What follows is a series of ethical questions with known and unknown facts, listing stakeholder's values with possible solutions. The intention is to generate awareness and questions about the ethical involvement of the treatment of narcotics abuse where different disciplines and specialists could work together.. Lilly and her sons all agreed not to adhere to the pain management specialist’s advice.