Richmond, VAMost of the consequences that people think of when they think of an ETHEX drug overdose are the normal ETHEX side effects. Those include the dizziness, the heart problems and the problems with blood pressure. But there could be further complications caused by reactions to ETHEX Corporation drugs. Problems that occur, for example, when an elderly woman passes out and is not found until the next day. Such complications can be life-threatening, or at the very least, life-altering.
Anne says that is what happened to her mother, Virginia, who was taking Morphine Sulfate Immediate Release tablets. Virginia collapsed on her floor and was found by her grandson. When she was revived, Virginia said that she had been on the floor all night and into the day.
"The ambulance got her to the emergency room," Anne says. "When we got there, the nurse said she looked like she had overdosed. We said that we just gave her the medicine she was supposed to have. We fix her medications up the day before for what she needs.
"She had been on the floor for so long that she had 2 blood clots to her lungs and cut the blood flow off to her leg. She had to have 6 operations on her leg because the muscle died. They had to keep taking off parts of the leg that died. She was transferred to another hospital and put in the ICU and they said at that hospital that she was like someone who was schizophrenic—she was reaching for stuff that wasn't there and her eyes were rolling back in her head. She was like that for 3 weeks and during that time she was still having the surgeries and didn't know where she was.
"About a month or two before [Virginia] collapsed, when she was on the Morphine, she said she saw people coming in her house [a hallucination]. She also said there were cats in her house and would go screaming because they were after her. She said she saw spiders that weren't there. One time, she said my son's ex-girlfriend, Linda, came into her home and put spiders on her. The doctors said they thought she had Alzheimer's, but we think it was the Morphine.
"It wasn't long after that when she collapsed. The doctors in the hospital kept giving her Morphine and Demerol—maybe they thought she was in pain because she has chronic back pain—but they finally decided after 3 weeks to take her off the Morphine. She slowly came to herself. She was in the hospital at least 4 to 5 weeks, but after she could tell where she was and her leg got better, they let her go. They were going to amputate her leg, but she refused. Now, she can walk on it. She hurts a lot because of her hip and she has to see doctors for it, but she can walk.
"After she got out of the hospital, her doctor gave her more Morphine. She had 2 more episodes where she wound up in the emergency room and they said she had overdosed. We told them she was taking what she was supposed to. The doctor finally took her off the Morphine and she stopped seeing things. She hasn't had any incidents with the spiders or the cats since then.
"We got a letter from the pharmacy about the oversized drugs and then we thought it was the Morphine (causing the problems). The pharmacist said the Morphine could have been why she collapsed."
Virginia was lucky that someone found her in time to get her help, and in time to save her leg. Unfortunately, she may have suffered serious consequences from taking a drug that she had no way of knowing was far stronger than she was supposed to have been taking—putting her life at risk.