The system just killed my grandfather, another victim of the opiate crisis

In January my 87 year old grandfather fell climbing into bed at the nursing home, and cut his head. They did an x-ray of his upper body when they gave him some stitches, everything was fine, but they saw an inconclusive shadow on his right lung, and determined he needed an MRI. Medicare delayed the MRI, and the nursing home then decided he was terminal and had cancer so they started pumping him full of opiates.

Despite being 87, he was sound of mind, able to walk 100-steps on his own power, and was ultimately healthy aside from diabetes and arthritis.

After two weeks of hallucinating, becoming bedridden, and losing his ability to speak from being on high doses of opiates mixed with psychiatric medications (which he didn't need, and we didn't know they put him on), my Mom and I finally found out what happened. The rest of the family failed to inform us he had even fallen.

We weened him off the opiates, and he began to recover. We finally got the MRI approved, and he was fine. He had a cold, the shadow on the x-ray was mucus. He did not have cancer. He was not terminal.

Unfortunately, we were too late. The withdrawals nearly killed him. When we tried to get him off the psych meds after he barely made it through opiates withdrawals he spiraled into a depression and stopped eating and drinking and died last Friday.

He repeatedly told us he did not want any more drugs, yet the nursing home put him on antidepressants a week into his fast, and gave him morphine the day before his death. He wasn't in pain, the morphine simply made him more uncomfortable.

My grandfather decided he would rather die than be force fed medications against his will, and have to rehab and learn to walk again. Unfortunately, my Uncle was the executor so we didn't have any legal say, and he just did whatever the doctors told him, and believed them. Even so, the doses of drugs they put him on far exceeded what they told my Uncle, and the nursing staff keep rotating shifts so often they were often double drugging him.

Anyhow, this whole experience has reminded me of how cruel and fucked up the medical system is. Without evidence, the doctors and nursing home decided to euthanize my grandfather with opiates and psych meds despite the fact there was nothing wrong with him. At least we were able to get him off the meds so he could die a more natural death, but even then they continued to drug him against his will. Obviously, I never would have put him in that nursing home, but my Mom nor I had any legal authority as my grandfather gave all authority to my idiot coward of an Uncle. Who now claims my grandfather was broke, he wasn't, and wants to have him cremated in a card board box despite the fact his church is opposed to cremation.

Fucked up times we live in. To think the pharmaceutical industry has people so brainwashed that they think its okay to disrespect a mans dying wishes to die a natural death and insist on drugging people to death instead.