t.  My grandmother was unwell for a very long time and suffering from extreme pain. She and her doctors were fully aware that she was addicted to the medication, but she wasn't going to ever recover anyway so this was the best they could do.  My mother went through the same thing before she died. She had an inoperable problem with her spine, replaced hip, replaced knee, kidney disease, fatty liver disease, severe arthritis, diabetes, etc. She was continuously in a lot of pain. The last year she was alive, she was on extended release morphine and oxy. I am glad that she was able to get some comfort (although it did not eliminate her pain), but being on high doses of those drugs means I actually lost my mother before she died. She wasn't the same person anymore.  In the context of this study, what does "for a year" mean in regards to using opioids? Is it a continuous, had a prescription fill every month for 00 months? Is it just had another fill a year later? I feel I'm not really understanding exactly what outcomes the study measured.  