Family wants answers in soldier's death

[Maine-ah]

http://www.mainecoastnow.com/articles/2007/08/16/courier_-_gazette/local_news/doc46c32f72b9329743674135.txt

WALDOBORO — Army National Guard Sgt. Richard Wilkes has been laid to rest but whether his family will find peace remains unknown.




One month after the highly decorated soldier was found dead in his barracks at Ft. Stewart Army Base in Georgia his mother, Dixie Sproul, still wants to know why her son died. Sproul and her daughter-in-law, Jennifer Lacrosse, question whether Wilkes received proper oversight while at the army base’s medical facility.

They say Wilkes was prescribed methadone to treat a back injury he sustained in a Humvee accident while serving as an automatic machine gunner in Afghanistan. He later took himself off the powerful pain killer because he didn’t like the side effects, Lacrosse said.

“The medical examiner’s report came back saying he was perfectly healthy,” Lacrosse said. “There is no reason why a 36-year-old healthy man died in his sleep. This family needs to know what happened. His last words to his mother were that ‘they will take good care of me.’”

[babylonsister]

1. I sure would want to know how he died, too. I don't trust anyone anymore.

:-( Besides, someone that young who dies unexpectedly, there has got to be a reason; he obviously wasn't 'perfectly healthy'.

[Breeze54]

2. That's strange! Sounds suspicious too.

Cripes!!

How incompetent are these medical people?

I want to know what happened too!!

[youngdem]

3. Why in the world would you medicate someone with Methadone?

disclaimer: I am not a doctor.

However, I am familiar with pain meds, and I have sadly had several friends over the years who ended up on Methadone to attempt to beat heroin. Methadone is addictive and can be dangerous, and really is only better than heroin, not a great drug for general use.

So WTF? Why wouldn't the army use something more reasonable here? Money?

[Maine-ah]

4. that part got me too.

:wtf:

[UNCLE_Rico]

5. Two possibilities spring to mind

1. Money - yes, possible, because methadone, per dose, is a very cheap and effective pain killer.

However, the only mitigating factor that might justify that particular treatment approach from an actual MEDICAL standpoint would be ...

2. The pain was basically expected to be acute for the rest of the persons natural life.

There are two classes of people who are prescribed methadone ... people severely addicted to very strong/euphoric short-acting opiates/opioids such as heroin, oxycodone, or dilaudid, and people who can be expected to be in serious pain until such time as they die - such as terminal cancer patients, or in SOME very rare cases, people with regular orthopedic-type pain. To give methadone for an INJURY which should logically be expected to heal to the point of not causing continuing life-long pain makes absolutely ZERO sense.

I'd be keen to know how long this patient had actually been OFF methadone at the time of his death. Was he in the depths of serious withdrawals? Though these are highly unlikely to cause actual death (you only WISH you were dead), methadone withdrawals are long-lasting and extremely brutal to endure, and people with certain medical conditions pre-existing need to be CLOSELY monitored for WEEKS when they do go off methadone.

My guess is that this guy offed himself somehow (people in W/D's do that ALL THE TIME - Kurt Cobain and Michael Hutchence being two examples) and the coroner either just hasn't really TRIED to figure out the true cause of death, or is hiding it from the family (liability, anyone?) because they KNOW this guy shouldn't have been on such an addictive drug (given his situation) in the first place...