The perfect novel to read on morphine

On the last day of my grandsons’ week-long visit, Saturday, I was struck by bone pain of an unsurmised ferocity. I reeled around the cave swearing with incredulity. Shoulders, shoulder blade, ribs, the right arm more or less useless. The day before I had looked in the mirror and found a mass on my neck I hadn’t noticed before, hard to the touch yet tender. Yes, by all means bring it down to Marseille, said the oncologist via email, and I’ll have a look at it. And while I’m at it, I’ll prescribe a stronger morphine dose. How about Monday afternoon?

Up till then I was on 40 milligrams of slow, long-acting morphine twice a day plus a reserve of fast-acting morphine for emergencies. For some reason the village pharmacy is tightfisted with the long-acting morphine capsules yet fantastically generous with these quick-acting ones, of which I have such an abundance that I gave them out last year as Christmas presents. ‘Well, you never know,’ I told the recipients.

I don’t know whether the pain got worse or the morphine lost its efficacy. From the beginning I have always understood that I might need to take more and more morphine to achieve the same result. Nevertheless I was a bit put out to find myself experiencing the cancer pain in full, unedited. As a last resort, the red emergency morphine pills turned down the blowtorch somewhat, but there was a price to pay, which was a Mr Bean-in-church level of drowsiness.

‘And what is the maximum morphine dose?’ I asked the oncologist when I saw him on the Monday in spring-like Marseille. ‘There isn’t one,’ he said. ‘One hundred, two hundred milligrams twice a day is not unusual. I’ve known patients inject themselves once an hour.’