Honouring our taken, Emily Mcgee button. 15 Cm Square Badge

In the time it took for her to write a text, Emily lost her life before she could press send from medications used to treat the symptoms of Trigeminal Neuralgia. From her mother Janet McGee The Medical Examiner's March 22, 2013 report cited toxic levels of oxycodone, oxymorphone, codeine, phenergan and acetaminophen. The oxymorphone, which is more potent than morphine, was present only as a metabolite of oxycodone. It was the toxicity of oxycodone, oxymorphone and codeine that were directly responsible for my daughter's death. She had to take phenergan to prevent her from throwing up all the expensive meds she was taking, as she also had a very bad case of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), along with oesophageal erosion (also known as Barrett's oesophagus. The additional problem with phenergan is that it inteacts with Gabapentin (which Em was prescribed for nerve pain) to make the thalamus keep you operating at an elevated body temperature. Since the opiates acted directly on the thalamus to cause simultaneous failure of Em's circulatory and respiratory systems, I think the point the coroner was trying to make was that the phenergan/Gabapentin mix had already compromised her thalamus. But, the opiates would have gotten her, anyway. It is the liver that metabolises opiates (with a little help from the kidneys), and having accumulating amounts of acetaminophen causing some liver damage did nothing to help Emily's side of the battlefield. I desperately want TN sufferers to know the dangers of the medications they are taking and to know what warning signs to look for. No doctor alive would prescribe anything in the opiate family to me (not even when I had two broken ribs and a kidney infection), as I have a history of Percoset toxicity. The symptoms were a spinal headache, extreme nausea and dizziness, inability to draw a full breath, and a feeling of my heart beating, hard, but arrhythmically, in my chest. Other symptoms present in Emily's case were itching and an erythmatous rash (like the bull's-eye rash made famous by Lyme disease). So, please watch out. If you experience these symptoms, it will be necessary to visit an Emergency Room. I know that sounds awful, as I'm sure many of you have had ghastly, dehumanising experiences in ER's. Emily certainly did. But if you suffer a toxic reaction to an opiate, that visit will be your only hope. A better alternative is to work with your doctor to avoid opiates in the first place.