Caution: Painkiller Alert
Pain medications can ease suffering—they can also kill. Here’s how to be safe
B Y MARY A. FISCHER ILLUS TRATIONS B Y DANIEL CHANG
I
N MAY 2008, Mable Mosley, then 68, arrived in
the emergency room of west Florida’s Brandon
Regional Hospital, complaining of neck and shoul-
der pain. Her husband, Alvie, a retired construction
worker, stayed by his wife’s side as a doctor examined her. On a scale of 0 to 10,
Mable’s pain reached a level 8, so the ER doctor prescribed three pain medica-
tions: Toradol, morphine sulfate, and Dilaudid. Mable’s pain dropped to a 1, but
later that day she was admitted to the hospital by her primary care physician,
who ordered a 50-microgram Dura-
gesic fentanyl patch, a powerful,
extended-release narcotic absorbed
through the skin. This was followed
the next day by a higher, 75-micro-
gram fentanyl patch, and then the next
day by a 100-microgram patch and
Neurontin, a nonnarcotic drug used
to treat pain caused by nerve injury.
“I’m not saying she wasn’t hurting real
bad. She was,” recalls Alvie. “But after
getting the first medications in the ER,
she felt much better.”
At midnight on her third day in
the hospital, Mable Mosley stopped
breathing; she was resuscitated but
died several days later. To a grief-
stricken Alvie, the cause of his wife’s
death seemed obvious: An overdose
of pain medications killed her. A year
and a half after her death, he filed a
wrongful-death lawsuit against the
hospital, the pharmacists, and the
doctors who had treated her.
