This is a letter I sent to my son's doctor. I have been increasingly concerned about the horrible side effects of medications. While my son never received a "save shot" like Prince did, my son did faint and lose consciousness on five different occasions in the past three years. Each time he revived but no one ever seemed concerned, as if it was "normal" for autistic people to lose consciousness over and over.
I became convinced that the fainting was being caused by medications. James was being given large doses of ATIVAN by the emergency rooms and UCLA had him on 5 MG of the hormone melatonin. When I reported that the melatonin seemed to be backfiring, causing night terrors and worse insomnia, the sleep clinic told me to up the dose to 10MG. I said that I could not in good conscience put 10 MG of melatonin in his mouth. I had seen him faint and scream out in agony shortly after the last time I gave him 5MG of melatonin.
James appeared to have acute upper body pain. I begged for James to be safely weaned off Ativan and I refused to give him any more melatonin. He had been on 5mg of melatonin for 2 years and was getting sicker and sicker, developing severe insomnia when he started out with only a mild sleep problem. I told the sleep clinic I did not want to put something in his mouth that might cause him to faint and not be revived the next time. I had seen him stop breathing. He came back, but what if he doesn't come back the 6th time? I couldn't take that risk.
When the medications stopped, the fainting stopped. Other side effects lingered. A CT Scan found a tumor on James' pancreas. There are studies that link the hormone melatonin to blood sugar problems. The bottom line is that James started sleeping normally when we stopped giving him melatonin. He stopped fainting when we stopped giving him ATIVAN.
Keeping James off ATIVAN was not easy...when he had to go to Little Company Of Mary ER because of urine retention and severe bladder pain, the doctor fought me tooth and nail trying to give James psych medications BEFORE doing an exam simply because James is autistic. ATIVAN was what caused the dehydration/loss of bladder control in the first place.
ATIVAN does NOT make James sleep, it makes him cry. ATIVAN does not calm James down. It makes him faint and lose control of his bowel and bladder.
The ER reluctantly did not give James the ATIVAN and they found he was easy to deal with and the urine test that he was sent to the ER to have done was finally done and showed he had a great deal of crystals in his urine.
For many years I believed the ER knew what they were doing. After watching my son's downward spiral I began to notice disturbing patterns. An ER doctor would prescribe a psych medication that no psychiatrist would recommend but other doctors would COPY whatever the ER did...and in turn...the next ER doctor would copy what the primary care doctor copied from the previous ER doctor....
A psychiatrist I took James to said he would not recommend ANY psych medications for James, that James had pain issues that needed to be addressed, and not with pain killers.
All too often when an autistic person comes into an ER, the entire focus becomes "What psych med should we give this person" instead of what is the physical cause of this distress? Bladder pain? Psych meds do not cure bladder infections. Once when James had a cut on his foot that bled a lot, he was given BENADRYL to "calm him down" and he was not given water to drink or an IV even though the ER said he might need water but was waiting for the order from the doctor first. James did not get water until we went home. He fainted from severe dehydration and ended right back in the ER where they gave him two IV's and a ton of ATIVAN.
James at 32 years old, had to wear diapers for the first time since he was a baby because he could no longer control his bladder until the large amount of ATIVAN passed. Then the retention began. He could not pee. If he dared cry in pain, he was given more ATIVAN. He began to have symptoms of drug withdrawal due to the uneven way he was hammered with ATIVAN.
The struggle to stop James from being over-medicated and given unnecessary medications is ongoing and so disturbing that I felt compelled to make this public.
Too many people in this nation are dying from prescription medication. My son came close to death several times.
Re: UCLA's over use of paralytic drugs for common cold and flu symptoms
James still has a cough. I'm keeping him out of the cool night air and out of the swimming pool until it is gone.
As in 12/5/14 when James had a productive cough and we were waiting for it to get better before we scheduled the sedated MRI. Dr. JC prescribed the medication "ZOFRAN" which completely shut down James' bowels for WEEKS.
Dr. JC called James' cold/flu: "EMESIS". I guess makes it easier to prescribe insane drugs, calling phlegm related vomiting, "EMESIS".
EMESIS sounds like the bad alien in a STAR TREK movie....a bastard you would HAVE to drop napalm on because he would laugh in the face of Robitussin.
When I discussed with Dr. C what Dr. JC had done to James, he shook his head slowly in disgust. What ever happened to common sense in medicine, old fashioned, decent, common sense? CVS pharmacists also wanted to know what the hell was Dr. JC thinking. It took months for James to regain normal bowel function. It snowballed into health problems that come from bowel problems....urine retention...to a dangerous degree.
Did UCLA Medical school give doctors courses sponsored by greedy drug companies called: "500 INAPPROPRIATE AND EXPENSIVE DRUGS TO PRESCRIBE TO PATIENTS WHO HAVE PRODUCTIVE COUGHS:
Why bother with expectorants when you can paralyze the bowels, shut down the kidneys and turn a common cold into aspiration pneumonia? Remember, healthy patients don't wine and dine you, we do, so prescribe our weird ass drugs for the common cold.
This shit paralyzes internal organs and especially kills the elderly, children and sick people, but what the hell, we can afford it, we are the pharmaceuticals, we are too big to fail. Prescribe our shit and we'll buy you lunch, maybe give you a vacation and country club membership, pimp you out real good if all your patients take our shit..."
ZOFRAN is inappropriate for someone who is vomiting because of a productive cough.
BENZONATATE should never be used to suppress a productive cough.
James is still coughing up chunks of white stuff. If he vomits because the chunks occasionally cause a gag reflex, it is better to let him vomit instead of giving him dangerous drugs that were never used for the common cold or flu in the past but now suddenly are being pushed, probably on recommendation by the drug companies.
So far no explanation has been given as to why doctors are suddenly departing from normal treatment of the common cold / flu and prescribing slews of dangerous drugs instead.
You know what happens when the radical medication for a common cold shuts down the bowels....more radical shit prescriptions on top of more radical shit prescriptions.
I was worried that James had the cough too long and wanted to make sure it was not turning into pneumonia.
The BENZONATATE he was prescribed could cause pneumonia.
You don't want to trap that white stuff in James' lungs, paralyze the lungs so he can't cough it up. The fact that the phlegm is coming up is a good thing. If it is so sticky that he is gagging on it, causing vomit, then chicken and garlic broth and maybe Robitussin ....but not medications that paralyze normal body functions and have killed too many kids.
I put off writing this because of the ordeal of saving our home last week from the out of the blue OCWEN attack where they took our home away from us even though I had ALWAYS paid the loan on time the entire six years. As a single mom with no attorney it was hard to save our home. It took over a week to get OCWEN to rescind and give us our home back. I still don't believe this happened to us.
( The Story Of My Ocwen Home Loan)
Dr. C is retired now, so I can't cry on his shoulder for advice on how to handle this overkill medication issue.
I guess he might say I owe it to James to speak the truth and enter into his charts that we do not want these crazy ass dangerous medicines routinely prescribed for common conditions.
These drugs have side effects that cause conditions far worse than the original cold or flu. I decided today that maybe I need to start a blog about this dangerous, out of control "OVERKILL" trend in the USA and our journey to recover from the side effects of medications James never should have been given AND our struggle to say "No" to the onslaught of unnecessary medications that to this day are still hurled at James. It still feels like we are navigating a mine field and that at any minute James might be given another harmful drug that he doesn't need and could be fatal.
James' teeth are another example of drastic harm done by inappropriate meds.
After his teeth were damaged by medications, he was given medications that hurt his penis, then his bowels.... If you heard about this being done to prisoners of war it would be called a crime against humanity. Why should we tolerate it just because doctors do it as part of routine care and our pharmaceutical TV commercials also tout it as routine risks we should just get used to.
Hello! It's not routine. We should not accept this stuff as "normal".Dr. JC caused James to be unable to move his bowels for WEEKS. I could feel the feces protruding when I cleaned him after he attempted to move his bowels....I could feel the feces contact the toilet paper, feces protruding at the opening of his anus...stuck there, week after week. He was MISERABLE and just sat on the toilet with the tip of the feces bulging out of him but he could not contract his muscles. His bowels were like a tube of toothpaste with no muscles to squeeze the paste out. Dr. JC did nothing to help James survive the side effects of her treatment of his cold.
This is the new way to treat the common cold? Doing this to someone is justifiable because it stops the cough reflex? Hello! It also stopped some pretty important functions!
Now the USA has nonstop TV commercials about how normal it is when medications paralyze your bowels. All you need is ANOTHER medication. It's like they think these commercials will get us USED to the idea, and prepare us for even MORE medications to treat the symptoms of medications....
You never see a commercial where the patient returns the medication to the doctor and tells them that medications that shut down the bowels are just wrong and if the doctor does not believe it, the doctor should take a few and experience loss of bowel function as a trade off for stopping phlegm caused vomit. There are safer ways to deal with phlegm caused by the cold or flu.
It is time for doctors to stop turning the common cold into paralytic nightmares.
First do no harm.
Yes, you can stop vomit by paralyzing the lungs, throat, stomach or bowels.
A person will also stop vomiting if you cut out their heart and feed it to the dogs, but why the hell would you want to go to that extreme?
Medicine is not an "extreme sport" even though doctors ARE treated more like snowboarder Shaun White than Mother Teresa by the medical reps who interrupt patient care appointments to push their products.
I don't know who taught a whole generation of doctors to give extreme medications for common ailments but the usual motive is greed...and the greediest of them all are the Pharmaceuticals...so they probably influenced whoever taught these doctors to be heavy handed with the medications that kill so many prematurely.
Greed is the only reason to turn the common cold into a series of horrible conditions that keep a patient sick many months after the flu season has passed...and there by also keep money flowing into the drug companies as patients are given a cascade of medications as they struggle to get their equilibrium back. It is a game of dominos and it is a deadly and completely unnecessary game.
Nowadays if you have phlegm, doctors in the USA don't treat it with expectorants to help you cough it up. They drop napalm on your ass and shut your ass down. I have new fears when it comes to the common cold....fears concerning the new way UCLA treats the common cold...
Taking my autistic son to the doctor's office when he has a cold does sort of remind me of the surf scene in APOCALPYSE NOW
"....Charlie don't surf....
...UCLA don't do expectorants no more.
UCLA drops fire on phlegm.
You ain't gonna cough no more.
You ain't gonna shit no more.
We have advanced weapons!
Fuck cough drops! Take ZOFRAN!
Fuck Vicks Vapor Rub! Take BENZONATATE!
Fuck chicken soup!
Fuck Robitussin!...
Ya can't cough if we shut down your bodily functions!
Your grandma's cough syrup don't shut shit down like this!
I LOVE THE SMELL OF PARALYTICS IN YOUR ORGANS!"
Like I used to ask Dr. C,
"What ever happened to Robitussin and chicken soup?"
This new over-kill trend in treatment in the USA kind of makes you want to run for your life at the first sign of cold or flu.
~ TO BE CONTINUED ~
