Propofol,(INN, marketed as Diprivan by Astra Zeneca) the hidden killer. This is a not so suble hint for someone to investigate and report on this drug.

We are all concerned right now with the Ebola crisis and the terrible mismanagment  of the situation in the U.S.  But someone really needs to investigate a drug that has increased in use for the last twenty years and has become the most used anesthesia in this nation.  Twenty years ago we were still one of the top listed nations for life expectancy, and top of the line medical care.  Since the increased use, or I should say mis-use of the drug Propofol,  the life expectancy of the elderly has decreased as has that of young  children.  Of courser there are other factors than just Propofol, like what the government is spewing out the tail ends of planes, the increased use of genetically modified food, but the hidden one, is the deaths that have been caused by the most used anesthesia for literally every procedure done in hospitals in the U.S. today.  The facts can be easily checked out on WEB MD, on the government drug information sites about the deaths of medical Residents by recreational; use  of Propofol.  Even Wikipedia has a very detailed article about Propofol and it’s risks.  There have also been a few recent law suits that shed a bit of light about this drug.  but unless you hunt, you find a lot of mis information that is stricly hearsay. 

I want it investigated because it has probably caused many hospital deaths during the last twenty years, but to protect themselves from malpractice, people have beedn told that their loved ones have died from other things, like actress Joan Rivers heart failure, blamed on a collapsed throat, while undergoing an outpatient procedure.  Why did her throat collapse?  Becasue Propofol is a paralytic drug.  That is one of its many dangerous side effects.  With an overdose it is actually quite common for older people to have their throats collapse, their lungs freeze up, and their heart to stop.  Generally when used for major types of surgery Propofol  is often combined with Fentynal, which frankly doubles the risk factors to the patient.    I am not a writer or a news investigator, I am a victim.  And because I actually survived, I feel I owe it to those like Joan Rivers, who no longer have a voice on this earth to expose this hidious drug and the harm it has and continues to cause due to medical malpractice, which is often due to just plain old ignorance of those who are in control of it’s use in patients.

It has been my experience that many physicians never read the drug side effects and even if they do their standard reaction is to believe the drug  reps rather than the actual risks.  Many drugs get aproved with very little study and most tend to say that only 5% of the population ever have problems with a drug.    Tell that to the multitudes of people of Northern European heritage who were given coated stints in the last several years who found that before the numbers showed problems with their livers, they had suffered incurable drug induced liver failure.  You see with coated stints you must use a drug called Plavix that alters the shape of blood platelets.  It actually gives them points and they don’t clog the stint because the sort of bounce off of one another.  Back when my brother died from that procedure about 5 years ago, it was all the rage.  Everyone who got a stint got a coated one.  Since then more information has come out and the drug recomendations have changed from a 5% risk factor to something much higher if you are of Northern European descent.  In fact is is no longer protocol to use the coated stint in that section of the population any more.  I say all of this because the numbers of people killed by Plavix is small compaired to those who have probably died from beiing given Propofol and Fentynal by either injection, or I.V .  What I discovered when I recovered enough from my 42 day hospital stay that included respiritory failure, 2 lung infections due to a syndrome caused by intravenous  Propofol, and a 3 and a half week coma that I very nearly did not come out of.  I got brain damage when I fell out the the ICU hospital bed, caught C-DEF, lost part of my mind, and have spent the better part of the last year or so trying to regain what I lost due to oxygen deprivation, and a too tight neck brace that cut off the blood supply to my right shoulder and my brain.  I now have two blood clots behind my ears deep in the neck that are huge and permanent.  The lack of blood supply caused necrosis to the back of my head and  that too did not heal normally.   

Did the surgery cause this..Absolutely not!!!!  It should have raised a flag and caused more caution on the part of those in control of my care when I did not wake up from surgery on schedule.  Twice they tried to wean me off of Propofol and Fentynal and my lungs simply refused to work. It normally takes about two to three days to wake from the type of surgery I had, and then you get released from the hospital as soon as bodily functions return to normal, somewhere between the 5th and seventh day. .  Mine did by the 8th day, but my surgery had been serious and lengthy but a success.  The malpractice began on that eighth day when I was fitted for a neck and back brace.  Something I discovered is not even used anymore for the procedure I had, but hey you spread the money around and keep the system running.  I was walking, talking and eating yogurt on that day that I was fitted for the brace.  I told the person it hurt and he looked and sure enough a rod was poking me.  He took the time to adjust that, but  when I pointed to my neck and said hurts, he chose to ignore that.  Since I was still pretty doped up I spoke in very short sentances and wasn’t quite all there yet.  He opted to ignore my statment for the time and said if it still hurt by the next day he would fix it.

  The next day didn’t come for me, because against all medical protocol, after finally waking up and breathing on my own, they raised the Propofol and Fentynal and put me back to sleep.   I didn’t wake back up for a very long time but apparently I moved my legs a lot,  Much, much later I discovered Fentynal can cause that when you have been kept on it too long.  I fell out of bed, probably trying to get someone to loosten the brace that was choking me and cutting off some very important blood supply.  I managed to escape a bed that had an alarm, that I was restrained in and no one knows exactily how long I was on the floor with all my tubes out, but I was code blue.  Where oh where was the nursing staff?  Why did no one hear the bed alarm?  We are talking ICU at a top rated hospital.  It was from that time on, day to day my life was in the balance and I did not discover just how bad the malpractice was till I found out that it is medical protocol to not leave someone on Propofol once they have begun breathing on their own and never do you raise the dose and put  them back to sleep.  It is protocol to not leave anyone on Propofol for more than 72 hours in ICU.  .   I could go on and on, and frankly this is the maximum time I can spend typing..that old blood flow problem with my shoulder. To hold me still they raised and raised my dose of propofol while telling my family they couldn’t understand why I didn’t wake up.  My husband was told from one day to the next that my survival chances were low, and if I did survive, I would have to be placed in a permanent facility for the mentally impared.  They just happened to have one  a state away.

They did not count on my having enough working brain cells left to ever go home.  But they didn’t know I had a previous IQ of 156.  So I actually finally woke up and I woke up mad, knowing that I had been overdosed and kept against my will for a very long time.  Something that if they had had their way and if I had not been a very strong willed person, I probably would have been kept on some other meds they gave me and those probably would have finished me off.  But I woke demanding to go home and telling them I fired them.  They toild me I couldn’t fire them, and I said “yes I can, I hired you , I can fire you”.  It took a few more days but I won.  I have most of my mind back, but due to the misuse of Propofol I can never have any surgery again because the anesthetic would probably kill me.   This took a long time to type for me, because I still get letters in the wrong order in words and spend a lot of time fixing my mistakes.  This is common with brain damage. 

When I  began to hunt for more information after finally getting home and a long recovery learning to walk and talk and breath normally and how to get a cup to my mouth…  I found that Residents, just like those who were in control of most of my care and the decisions made for me without the family being told that propofol had put me in this shape were actually some of the people who were dying from  propofol mis-use.  In fact 40% of Residents who have used Propofol as a recreation or sleep drug, die from administering it to quickly by syringe, or by using a wrong dose.  The lungs freeze up, just like Michael Jackson’s did, and they don’t unfreeze.  And very young, very healthy people are dying and they are the ones who are administerikng Propofol to their patients,   in teaching hospitals.   The heart stops like Joan River’s did.  She did not have to die… Protocol  demands that as people age, less and less Propofol must be given to them.  And even in anyone, giving just three mm over what is needed to put them to sleep can stop the heart and luings.    If it is given too quickly it kills.  Look for the lawsuit that paid out 15 million dollars for the wrongful death of a woman that a hospital had to pay because someone untrained in the specific protocol for propofol, administered the right amount too quickly.  She too had made it through her surgery and a nurse, who was not charged, just followed written orders to give her a shot of Propofol.  She died shortly thereafter and left a grieving family without their mommy.  I can not find a lawyer with enough guts to take on this system and it’s blatant misuse of a deadly drug that three states wanted to use as the drug of choice in their prisons to kill those on Death Row.   Please someone take up this cause and begin to fight for those who can no longer speak.  Think about what Joan Rivers would want..That woman never backed down from a good fight and she never whitwashed truth.  Speak for her..

In my desire to get the word about Propofol out I made one huge error.  I indicated that the reason I was still here and had some brain cells that still worked, was somehow because of my strength.  Truly it had far more to do with the prayers of many many people who just were not quite ready to let me go just yet.  I thank them and I thank God for answering those prayers.  Thank you for reading this, and please warn anyone you can.  A Law Office I was in touch with told me to be sure in any procedure you have that requires sedation, right where you sign your name, you should also write any allergies and that you require them to follow medical protocol if you are being sedated with Propofol.  Norma Dowling