Has anyone else had loved ones die from medications?

[grace0418]

Another thread has me curious.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=183230&mesg_id=186239


My dad died this way. To quote my other posts, "He was healthy as a horse until a doctor in Florida prescribed a cholesterol medicine for him. When my dad complained that his neck suddenly started hurting and feeling weak, the doctor told him he had a vitamin defficiency. When my dad, visiting family in Seattle, suddenly collapsed due to respiratory failure, the doctors were convinced he had ALS. Even though his symptoms and the progression of the neuromuscular degeneration did not match ALS, they were firm. Never once did they bother to research the medications he was on and see if they were causing these "side" effects. A few hours of research by my siblings and I turned up reports of *very* similar symptoms in people taking the same medicine my dad was taking. But the doctors wouldn't listen. By then, the damage had been done anyway. He died a few months after he collapsed.

Funny how things work out. My dad didn't drink or smoke, he ate his veggies, played tennis and walked a few miles every day, had parents that lived well into their 80s... but was killed at 72 by a medicine that was supposed to help him live longer.

This is why I am very reluctant to take medications today."




So now I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this kind of thing.

[FloridaPat]

1. An uncle I had that died may have been another victum. My aunt

said he had problems, but the doctors wouldn't listen. It's rather common with so many drugs being given out.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

2. My mother was quite elderly

but basically healthy except for a heart rythm problem and high blood pressure. She got a cold which a dr. diagnosed as pneumonia w/out an xray. Into the hospital she went where they gave her five new meds. Then the dr. said no pneumonia, just bronchitis. But they kept up the meds. Her lungs got better but she got wierder and wierder. Eventually she just faded away. My sister, a nurse, insists it was over medication. Her final diagnosis on her death certificate said parkinson's. She had never been diagnosed with parkinson's ever.

I think over medicating killed her.

[cornermouse]

4. If you're worried about your medications conflicting with each other

go talk to your pharmacist and ask him/her some questions.

[cynatnite]

3. Here's a couple of places you can check out...

This one will let you click on selected drugs and will show you the interactions.

http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/Interaction/ChooseDrugs

This one will give you information about medications.

http://www.rxlist.com/

The best thing to do when prescribed medication is to discuss it with your doctor and/or your pharmacist. Doesn't hurt to research on your own. It's far better than not taking medication that does do some good.

[mopinko]

5. i won't take any of the new ones any more.

the fda stopped doing it's job a while ago. if it has been around long enough to come in a generic, i will take it.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

16. You sure got that right n/t

[bonito]

6. It's scary, all side effects might not be listed

and or unknown I have found with a lot of drugs, I'll go alternative medicine first, might be side effects there also, but my experience shows a lot less, and i can take as little or as much depending how I feel right up to the maximum recommendations.

[jobycom]

7. A cousin of mine died from medication

She was my mother's first cousin, so more like an aunt to me. She had emphazema, but not too bad. For an unrelated reason, her doctor put her on a pain killer and some form of muscle relaxant. So after a couple of days she was feeling tired, and laid down to take a nap. The drugs relaxed her muscles to the point where her breathing was too weak to overcome the emphazema, and she died in her sleep. She was 52, and in pretty good health, aside from the emphazema.

[SmokingJacket]

8. A relative died of an outright mistake.

Simply given a massive dose of the wrong medication. Her immediate family got $$$ for it.

My grandmother probably would have survived given a different medication, but that's more a doctor's suspicion than anything.

Used to be a patient would have ONE doctor, who knew the patient well and controlled all aspects of treatment. THese days, numerous doctors see and treat patients they don't know at all. I think that leads to a lot of problems.

[Neecy]

9. yes, I think so

My 47 year old sister died in her sleep last April from heart failure. She'd been on Vioxx for almost three years for a knee injury.

I could never prove the Vioxx killed her, but there's enough evidence out there to make me think it might indeed have been responsible for her death.

It was a very sad Christmas for my family. I'm sure the Merck executives had a wonderful one.

[grace0418]

12. I'm really sorry Neecy

We felt the same way about my dad, like we couldn't prove it in court but the evidence sure pointed that way. Some of my siblings wanted to sue, but the drug companies have deep pockets and we have very shallow ones. A couple of my siblings just refused to believe the doctors could be wrong, so that didn't help either. In any case, that was a hard xmas for us too, my dad died December 13. But for your family it must've been extra difficult because she was so young. Parents aren't supposed to outlive their children.

;( :hug:

[Neecy]

15. That's the problem

My brother-in-law is just a regular guy, a union printer who doesn't have the funds (or the heart at this point) to take on Merck. I think that's what big pharma counts on.

How devastating to lose your dad so close to Christmas. I wonder how many other American families suffered during the last holiday season thanks to the greed and corruption of the FDA and the drug companies.

[rogerashton]

10. I'm not sure my fatherinlaw counts as a loved one, but

he was ok -- mostly.

Suffered from pancreatitis. On two occasions he was taken to the hospital and had this problem misdiagnosed as a heart attack. The SECOND time, they panicked and filled him full of anticlotting and blood thinner drugs. He never recovered from the internal bleeding that resulted.

[brook]

11. An uncle...

of mine died from a combo of 'heart' drugs. The drugs made him somewhat irrational - so the docs said "Alzheimer's". By the time the VA hospital got him straightened out, his heart failed.

My father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I won't go into details, but he died within 6 weeks. An autopsy showed an infection - not cancer. Took me years to come to term with my anger and needless to say, I'm not inclined to run to the doctor when I don't feel well, muchless take prescribed meds.

[Ilsa]

13. Plavix was prescribed for my mom after a stroke, but it

dissolved a weak clot on her foramen ovale (septum in the heart) and the tiny clots caused mor eminor stroking until she didn't want to live any more and she died. Verified by a heart cath.

[Aimah]

14. I had a near miss twice personally..

I'm allergic to most antibiotics some worse than others. I was prescribed an antibiotic and the next day after taking one dose I woke up with the whites of my eyes brown, constant body pains and I had a constant head ache that felt like I'd been attacked with a sledge hammer. The doctor said I had the flu. He told me to continue to take my antibiotics which I did but I ended up in the emergency room as I lost the ability to walk. This doctor told me to continue to take my meds but as it got worse not connecting the two together I stopped taking the drug on my own. What should have been a 3 day recuperation turned into 3 weeks of complete bed rest. Two years later I was proscribed the same antibiotics but just assumed that I had the flu the first time. Took the meds and the same thing happened. When I went to the emergency and told him about the medication he argued with me telling me it wasn't possible. That the drug in question didn't have those kinds of symptoms. I guess he missed the fact that I had to be wheeled in to the ER in a wheel chair. I can only imagine what would have happened to me if I'd taken all of the meds.

[0007]

17. My uncle died from a coffee enema.

He was into the holistic stuff. Even to this day at the Family re-unions they talk about poor Conrad.

I once had a colonic irrigation. That's where they pump 150 gallons of water through your colon in about three minutes to clean ya out. I figure I've had enough to last for quite a while. People do swear by em. :shrug:

[coffeenap]

18. I am sure a deadly drug combo led to my father's death last year. nt

[Stevepol]

19. I think my Dad died from medications, over-prescription of same.

And I personally think that if there were ways to eliminate other factors that over-prescription or mis-prescription of meds is the PRIMARY CAUSE of older people's death.

Now of course they would have died anyway, all of them. My Dad was in his late 70s at his death. But I think this is the leading cause of "early" death of older people and a big cause of all other deaths.

[philb]

20. Pharmaceuticals/doctor mistakes are the No. 1 cause of hospitalizations

and deaths, of similar magnitude to cardiovascular and cancer.

I had a 16 year old nephew(football player) die with a minor cut die due to staff infection picked up in the emergency room
and likewise a coworker who died from staff infection picked up in hospital there with minor illness and a friend of my son on his soccer team who almost lost a foot due to staff infection picked up in doctor's office after minor soccer injury.
(all antibiotic resistant staff infections)

Someone in my immediate family was chronically affected with major lifelong hormonal problems related to their mother taking an estrogenic drug prescribed during the 1950s suposedly to prevent miscarraiges(which wasn't true and based on bad test info)

Its hard to really know what elderly people die from these days since most are taking 8 to 10 prescription drugs all of which have
adverse effects and interactions, often serious.

http://www.flcv.com/iatrogen.html

[RedOnce]

21. We lost my sister 12/18/05, she was 47...

We are still waiting for the Coroner's report but it appears that she died from the interaction of Vicodin and Soma that she had been taking for neck pain. This combo causes addiction and in high enough dose death!

Soma (carisoprodol) should be a controlled substance since it metabolizes in your body to the chemical equivalent of meprobamate, a Schedule IV controlled substance.

Something is seriously wrong with American medicine especially Big Pharma and it's mistress the FDA.

[benEzra]

22. No, but my son has had some adventures with surgical antibiotics

due to genetic immune-system funkiness (he has no thymus gland, so his T-cell counts are low and their function is suboptimal). It's tricky when a kid at risk of bacterial endocarditis and regularly has open-chest surgeries can't have penicillins, amoxicillin, cephalosporins, vancomycin, or clindamycin. I also had to watch him go through full-blown, cold-turkey morphine withdrawal at age 3 after an open-heart surgery and complications...very hard, but necessary (he couldn't even have methadone for a day or two).

Our son also had bad side effects with metaclopramide (Reglan), a gastrointestinal medication that's been on the market (and generic) for many years. Messes around with the brain's dopanine system in the basal ganglia, and causes Parkinson's in some users (eek!). We were already seeing central nervous system side effects (dull baby syndrome), and it wasn't doing squat for our son's condition, so we pegged the risk/benefit analysis at "high risk, no benefit" and went with Propulsid instead (much more effective at a lower dose, with no side effects).

Then we got on the other side of the drug equation. My son pretty much needed Propulsid (cisapride) to live, due to extreme gastrointestinal dismotility, and is still on it now. Unfortunately, some careless doctors had been prescribing Propulsid to elderly men with histories of ischemic heart disease WITHOUT DOING EKG'S, even though Propulsid is KNOWN to prolong the QT interval on the EKG (harmless for most people, including my son, but dangerous for a few), and some patients died. Instead of going after the doctors who didn't BOTHER to run EKG's on their Propulsid patients, Sidney Wolfe/PCHRG went after my son's medication instead...and got it pulled from the market shortly after my son's first birthday.

With help from our doctor, we bought all the Propulsid we could afford (liters!) out of our own pocket before the ban went down, cleaning out our local pharmacies. We ran out during the next year, and my son stopped growing, lost the ability to eat solid foods, and started going downhill...we finally got into a clinical trial through which we can get the medicine again, but he's limited to half the dose he was on before, which has set his growth back a bit, but he survived and is learning to eat again. We currently drive 1700 miles round trip every 4 months to visit the ONE doctor that will provide us our son's medicine...the others are either too scared of the liability or don't meet Janssen's criteria for participating in the clinical trial.

My son is one of the lucky ones. OUR doctor fought for more than a year to jump through all the hoops to get my son enrolled...most doctors wouldn't have done that.



BTW, for those who have a little background in biochemistry, the pharmacology pages at rxlist.com are an excellent resource.

[Warpy]

23. Rhabdomyolysis is most likely the name of the problem above

and had been documented with drugs of abuse as well as prescription drugs.

The physician in question was guilty of not listening to his patient and not doing a few timely tests which would have found the problem before it was too late and ruled out the other alternatives like ALS. There is probably a lawsuit in this one, since symptoms were reported early. Rhabdomyolysis can kill, though, if not treated promptly.

I would expect people who are prescribed any medication and who are online to look that drug up at Medline or just Google it to find out what is expected as a side effect and what is not expected and constitutes an adverse reaction. I would also expect people taking medications to report ALL odd reactions to their physician and to their pharmacist, as that's who should forward the information to the FDA. Only by assembling enough data can they distinguish coincidence from causation.

Medications can improve and lengthen our lives when taken properly and when our bodies can tolerate them. Being terrified of medication because of apocryphal stories is foolish. Just be aware and be educated.

On Edit: although all bets are off on whether or not the GOP FDA will do anything with the data they assemble on new adverse effects, we can hope that in the future the agency is cleaned out of all appointees from this administration and that once again they have a chance of standing up for the people against the powerful drug industry. Report those side effects, anyway. The data will be there, and may be instrumental in sending some of the worst of these guys to prison if something that should have been done to protect the public was not done for political expediency.

[Mz Pip]

24. Me, almost from aspirin

Woke up one night about 4am because of a noise. Had a bit of a headache and took two aspirin. Within 20 minutes my palms started itching, I broke out in horrible itchy hives. My face, lips and tongue swelled up. I stood up to get my shoes on so hubby could take me to the doctor and I got intense naussea, dizziness and abdominal cramping. My blood pressure dropped and I collapsed. Hubby called 911 and I was taken to the hospital.

Now I go everywhere with a bottle of benedryl and an epi-pen.

So no more NSAIDs for me ever.

Had another allergic reaction a couple of days ago to who knows what. Took the benedryl and it worked.

Mz Pip
:dem: