The 60 Minutes piece on opioids was an eye opener for me

[Ms. Toad]

22. You should be grateful you and your father had surgical teams

That understood the importance of staying ahead of the pain, even if they were apparently not communicating well about what they were doing.

It is challenging to try something else first for a variety of reasons. Other things do not work as quickly as opioids. If you try something else first you give the pain a longer time to dig in, and by the time you are willing to try opioids, you may need a much higher dose to take care of the pain than if you had taken something to prevent it from getting that high in the first place. In addition, the something else is usually tylenol-based - as are most opioids. Because even small Tylenol overdoses can destroy your liver, you may not be able to take the standard first line opioid, which is lower dose because of the Tylenol combo -so again, you may have to take a higher dose without Tylenol because you tried to avoid taking it at all.

Bottom line, you seem to be reading too much into what, in my experience is consistent with best practices for pain management, aside from, perhaps, clear communication about why they kept offering pain meds.