VA hospital killed my mom with a BP medicine overdose

[kenny18]

Hello, I just found this forum and am wondering if anyone could give me some advice.

My mom was a disabled Navy veteran. She was an inpatient at the VA hospital for two weeks and was discharged the last day around 5pm. She seemed fine and went out to dinner with a friend. She collapsed in the bathroom later that night around midnight. Her friend heard her fall and called an ambulance. The ambulance brought her to a normal hospital (not the VA hospital) and she died there a few hours later.

The autopsy shows that she died from a massive overdose of blood pressure medicine, amlodipine. Her blood level of amlodipine was 500 times higher than the therapeutic dose. She had normal levels of all her other medicines. I did research about amlodipine deaths and it happens when someone is given too much of the medicine and it builds up in the body over time and then kills them. It takes a while to have the toxic effect so this was definitely caused by something they did at the hospital before she was discharged. There is no way this was suicide - she didn't even have that much medicine and there were no pills in her stomach.

I submitted a request for records but the VA only gave me basic info. I asked for complete info regarding that hospital stay, like specifically what dose of what medicines was she given at what time and by whom. Instead, they sent me a CD with 700 pages of records listing all the dates she had ever had a doctors appointment in her life and the names of the doctor for each appointment, but no specific info about that hospital stay like I asked. 

I went in person to both the VA hospital and to an assistance center and got no effective help. The assistance center had me file a bunch of paperwork that I don't really understand. I got a denial in the mail saying that the VA denies "DIC, Death Pension, and/or Accrued Benefits" because of "you did not provide complete information or evidence". I called them to ask about what info they need specifically. They were not at all helpful and now it is past the appeal date. I'm not sure if this paperwork from the assistance center was even the right stuff to submit.

Does anyone have any advice for what to do in this situation? I want the VA to tell me what exactly happened and why they killed my mom. She was only 44 years old. My little sisters have to grow up without even knowing their own mom.

Edited September 7, 2017 by kenny18

[kenny18]

Hello again,

I am still looking through paperwork. I have a lot of stuff to go through unfortunately but I know the autopsy report is somewhere in that storage space.

I don't know if their dad filed anything. Is there a way to check? I'm not sure if he is even aware that our mom died. He moved across the country and then was in Afghanistan for a while. I've tried to reach out to him on multiple occasions but he always sends my letters back unopened because he probably thinks they are from my mom and not me personally.

I think that my mom was supposed to be paying child support but wasn't able to because she was intermittently homeless. Sometimes she slept at the church and other times she was able to get an apartment. It was so sad to see her go through all that. She was a really good person. I volunteer with homeless people and it's so frustrating how many of them are veterans with stories similar to my mother's. They try to apply for assistance and get this crazy run-around with paperwork and miss deadlines and such because they don't have a permanent address. Fortunately we have a veterans assistance center in town but some of the veterans have psychological trouble and not just physical, so for them it is even harder. I feel so mad about how my mom was treated. She joined when she was only 18 and gave everything she had, worked so hard, and then when she got sick the military totally turned its back on her and treated her like a stack of paperwork instead of a human being. My baby cousin joined the Marines last year and I am so worried that if something ever happens to him that they might treat him with the same cold disregard.

I think the next step right now is to keep digging through the papers or just contact the medical examiner to get another copy. Then I will post that for yall and request the full records. Tbh even if they don't approve any help for my sisters I don't care. At this point I just want them to at least acknowledge that they made a mistake.

Sorry for the long post without much helpful info. Just wanted to let you know I'm still here and still working on this. Thank you so much for all the info. It's a lot to look in to!!