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  1. #1

    Default Over-Prescribing Opiates to Mentally Ill Patient Led to Attempted Murder

    My question involves medical malpractice in the state of:Michigan

    My mother is a bi-polar manic depressive and we have know about the disease for about 15 years. When diagnosed, she initially had a very hard time handling the disease and over time was able to gain a grip on it. She went about 8-9 years without having a significant episode and all had seemed well. Enter the new primary care physician. My mother had always had some back pain, but nothing to major. She mentioned it to the doctor who immediately prescribed her 750mg Vicodin 3x daily. This is on top of the mental medications she was already on, including Klonopin. This is a questionable prescription as it seems a bit overkill, but not the biggest concern of mine. Anybody who takes Vicodin 3x a day will develop an addiction. Over time, as the tolerance grew bigger, the once minor back pain, now became greater. Now the PCP added Morphine 30mg 2x a day on top of the Vicodin. Shortly after this, I noticed that the medications weren't making it to the end of the month, this turned into her being wasted on the medications daily. At this point I had put my foot down and demanded to speak to the doctor. I explained to her that my mother was doing nothing but abusing these medications and that she needed to try another approach, such as physical therapy. She basically brushed me off and continued prescribing multiple opiates. Over time, the pill combination grew from Vicodin 3x a day with 30mg Morphine 2x a day, to the Vicodin with 60mg of Morphine, with 120mg of Morphine, and eventually to the Vicodin 3x a day with Opana 2x a day most recently. Every physician she went to other than her primary care physician would make mention that she was on way too many opiates. I continually tried to contact the PCP and explain to her that she had turned my mom into a zombie. She would never return my calls. I had directly left messages explaining that my mother was abusing all of the medications she prescribed, she never returned my calls. All the while, my mother was deep within an opiate addiction, running out of pills about halfway through each month, and turning to alcohol to help her through the withdrawals. She even started to look to the streets, putting her in danger. Continually I kept trying to contact this doctor and no return call, no action, no addressing the problem, nothing. This went on for years and I basically gave up because I could not get anybody to listen to me. Throughout the whole addiction, her mental illness was surfacing. Progressively getting worse due to her not being able to remember to take her mental meds. Mind you, before being prescribed all of the opiates, this was no issue, she took her medication properly and the mental illness was held at bay. This whole prescribed addiction has been present for about five years total. February 18,2013 my mother was an opiate driven zombie, prescribed Vicodin 750mg 3x a day and Opana 30mg 2x/day(I believe the mg was 30). She had reached a point where she didn't even know what was going on around her. She was completely off of her mental medications and only taking the opiates the doctor was prescribing. She completely lost her mind, and thought the devil was possessing her. In this manic state of mind she believed my father was the devil. She proceeded to walk into his room and stab him in the back with a butcher knife twice as he slept. He did survive. She was arrested and charged with attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon. She is currently being held in the Forensic Psychiatry Center ran by the state and is pursuing a not guilty by reason of insanity claim. Everything seems to be working towards that. Suprisingly, over the first month of being there the back pain that was so prevalent for years, was non-existent. The only difference was no pills to make her body think that it needed them. Without them, she was pain free and realized that she had been the victim of a horrible addiction prescribed to her by her PCP. The whole time I was trying to tell everybody this and everybody agreed, but nobody would do anything about it. Now I'm stuck trying to pick up the pieces of my mothers life for her and try to find some way of helping her to achieve a normal life once she gets through the legal proceedings. My hope is that I can hopefully make the doctor pay for the hell that she put my mom through. I'm not looking to for a mass amount of money from a lawsuit, just something to help get my mom a small home so she can try to live a normal life after this is all said and done. FYI the doctors are in full agreement with the her lawyer that they feel she is truly a not guilty by reason of insanity case. Many people try to fake the NGRI plea, but she is not one of those cases. Please try to give me some advice as to what I should do. Like I said, I've turned everywhere and never was given a definitive answer on what I should do. Thank you in advance.

  2. #2
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    Default Re: Over Prescribing Opiates to Mentally Ill Patient Led to Attempted Murder

    The first question that will likely be asked is whether you were ever given any power of health care decision making over your mother in the first place.

    Gail

  3. #3
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    Default Re: Over-Prescribing Opiates to Mentally Ill Patient Led to Attempted Murder

    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
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    Anybody who takes Vicodin 3x a day will develop an addiction.
    Anybody who takes opiate medication over a long enough time will develop a dependency. A dependency is not an addiction. With virtually all opiates/opioids, they'll also develop a tolerance and require a higher dose over time to achieve the same level of pain relief.
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    Shortly after this, I noticed that the medications weren't making it to the end of the month, this turned into her being wasted on the medications daily. At this point I had put my foot down and demanded to speak to the doctor. I explained to her that my mother was doing nothing but abusing these medications and that she needed to try another approach, such as physical therapy. She basically brushed me off and continued prescribing multiple opiates.
    That could be an issue of a doctor who was writing prescriptions to keep her patient happy, or it could be an issue of a doctor perceiving things differently than you and regarding you as a meddlesome relative attempting to interfere with her patient's care. You were at the office, so you probably have some sense of this doctor and her practice. We don't have that context.
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    Over time, the pill combination grew from Vicodin 3x a day with 30mg Morphine 2x a day, to the Vicodin with 60mg of Morphine, with 120mg of Morphine, and eventually to the Vicodin 3x a day with Opana 2x a day most recently.
    It is not clear from your narrative that the problem here is that she was receiving an excessive amount of prescription medication, or that she was lying to her doctor about her drug use while supplementing her prescriptions with whatever she was buying from her drug dealer(s).
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    Every physician she went to other than her primary care physician would make mention that she was on way too many opiates. I continually tried to contact the PCP and explain to her that she had turned my mom into a zombie. She would never return my calls.
    Did you have power of attorney? Perhaps your mother told her to ignore you.
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    February 18,2013 my mother was an opiate driven zombie, prescribed Vicodin 750mg 3x a day and Opana 30mg 2x/day(I believe the mg was 30). She had reached a point where she didn't even know what was going on around her.
    But it wasn't just the prescriptions - she was taking street drugs and drinking alcohol on top of her prescriptions and street drugs, while not taking her anti-psychotic medications.
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    Suprisingly, over the first month of being there the back pain that was so prevalent for years, was non-existent. The only difference was no pills to make her body think that it needed them.
    It's possible that she didn't ever need them. It's possible that the entire time she was complaining about back pain and seeking pain medication she was lying to her doctor in order to get drugs that she used to get high.
    Quote Quoting safronenko1983
    My hope is that I can hopefully make the doctor pay for the hell that she put my mom through. I'm not looking to for a mass amount of money from a lawsuit, just something to help get my mom a small home so she can try to live a normal life after this is all said and done.
    The problem here is that your mother's psychiatric episode was triggered by her failure to take her anti-psychotic medications, not due to the prescriptions, compounded by the fact that she was abusing her prescriptions and was consuming alcohol and using street drugs on top of her prescriptions - this was not a case where "She took her prescriptions as ordered and had side effects that her doctor reasonably should have known would lead to a psychotic episode".

    Odds are her medical records are overflowing with her reports of severe pain and demands to have her doses increased so she can moderate her pain. Even if I assume that the doctor is a drug dealer with a prescription pad (and despite what you may see as skepticism above I am prepared to accept that possibility) those factors make it extraordinarily difficult to establish causation. You were aware of the growing problem. She was living with her husband who was also aware that her drug use was out -of-control and that she was not properly managing her psychiatric condition. You were apparently actively consulting with your mother's other doctors. Yet neither you nor your father thought it was necessary to take action and apparently neither did any of your mother's other doctors. That makes it a lot harder to argue that the doctor prescribing the opiates knew or should have known that your mother was going to have a psychotic episode.

    Get the medical records together and have them reviewed by a malpractice lawyer.

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