A week passed at home with the new baby. It was pretty uneventful. Then, one afternoon, I was in my office at home working, and my daughter came in and said, “Mom, I don’t feel Ok”. I asked, “How do you not feel Ok?” She said, “I don’t feel anything.’ Everything is black.” I consoled her. I, of course, thought she was feeling this way due to postpartum depression. So, I told her we would visit my friend, her OB-GYN. I made an appointment immediately. Her OB-GYN gave us a questionnaire for symptoms of postpartum depression, from mild to severe. When we were finished filling it out, the results indicated severe postpartum depression. Beautiful Anne’s OB-GYN then gave us a referral to a counselor. The counselor was a friend of hers. OxyContin was never spoken about; she never even asked her if she took it or not. She never even thought about how OxyContin might impact a woman after giving birth, let alone a teenager, giving birth, and the natural chemistry changes that occur after giving birth. My friend, her OB-GYN, never considered the impact of the drug a narcotic. She prescribed to her a narcotic, an opioid, because unless you have gone through someone you love being addicted or by taking the opioid/narcotic yourself or having a loved one trapped by it, you do not have a real understanding of the absolute devastation it can create. Again, it does not matter if the opioid/narcotic is taken as prescribed; it matters if you have a predisposition for addiction.
There is a fallacy in prescribing medications for pain. Pain is natural; what is unnatural is not feeling pain. Because you are introducing something into the body that is not natural, no one knows how the body will react to an opioid/narcotic. We, society, choose to blame the person who has just had their chemistry altered. My daughter did not go to the hospital to have a baby, and then have her chemistry altered. She simply went to the hospital to give birth and become a mom.
We went to the counselor, as suggested by Anne’s OB-GYN. When we met with the counselor, the counselor probed to find out about beautiful Anne. She asked about her circumstances, and then she asked about the baby’s father. Anne said he went to college out of state. The counselor never asked about the medications Anne may be taking. She never asked why Anne came to see her. The counselor focused on the relationship with the boyfriend/ father of the sweet baby girl. He was still in contact with beautiful Anne. The counselor concentrated on that relationship being the problem in the situation. The professionals did not do their due diligence to determine that the bigger part of the situation was that beautiful Anne had been given an opioid.
After that counseling session, beautiful Anne became more distraught and uncomfortable. It was hard to console her. It was hard to let her know everything was going to be Ok, when I did not know that she was craving and needing the opioid. I did not even know about it being a narcotic, and no one even directed attention to it. Then the madness began. Madness that felt like insanity. The boyfriend, the baby‘s father, took some time out of school and came home. Before he got home, beautiful Anne was already meeting friends, or people that she knew, and getting other drugs. I did not realize that was going on. I knew she had increased emotional ups and downs, but I still assumed that it was from the postpartum depression. I still did not know it was OxyContin addiction-related, and that was the cause of the dramatic mood swings and odd behavior.
Our sweet baby girl’s father went back to school out of state, creating enormous discomfort for beautiful Anne. She was afraid she would be all alone. That he was not going to be the baby’s dad, and he would be with other people, so why would he need her? She felt she had made the biggest mistake of her life.
During this time, I was asked to be a partner in a small therapy clinic. I agreed and planned to have an open house at my new therapy clinic. On the night of our open house for the therapy clinic, beautiful Anne said she had a friend get-together to attend and asked if I would watch our sweet baby girl. I said yes and told her to bring our sweet girl to the open house, and I would introduce beautiful Anne and our sweet baby to the other therapists who came to the open house. My husband also attended the open house. My Anne came with my sweet baby girl, and she looked beautiful, and the baby was all smiles.
When the open house was over, my husband and I went home with our sweet baby granddaughter. I took care of her until Anne came home. Beautiful Anne seemed OK when she came in the door to the house. My son was upstairs, and I was making dinner. My husband was in our home office. When my son started coming downstairs for dinner, he looked over the railing into the living room and said, “Mom, I think something is wrong with Anne.” I then called her from the kitchen, and she did not respond. She had been doing her schoolwork on the computer, sitting on the couch in the living room. I looked in the living room and saw that her mouth was open, and her head was tilted back. Her skin was a funny color, also. I assumed that she had had too much alcohol. I went into the living room and tried to get her to respond, but she moaned and groaned. I tapped her face and then slapped her arms, trying to get her to come to. Then, I yelled for my son to make coffee. I got her up and began walking her around as best I could, and then my son helped me. She started to move around. She did not talk but mumbled a little bit. It was not intelligible.
I chilled the coffee for her. After drinking, she woke up, became alert, started yelling, and ran upstairs wildly. She went to her bedroom, and I followed her. Her younger brother just watched and listened in case I needed him. She went all over that room, wailing, floundering, and I didn’t know what was wrong. She began to froth at the mouth and kind of gasp. I asked her what she drank, and then she told me that she had taken fentanyl. I did not know what to think. I started panicking. Her hands began to turn black. She was gasping more now, and I pushed her to the floor, as if there was smoke in the room. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared for her and the baby, and what she did. It comes at you so fast, especially when you’re not that kind of thinker. I didn’t know about drugs. I could not even fathom that she had done such a thing. At this time, I only knew of drugs from TV. In my mind, I thought somebody slipped it to her in a drink or something, but she told me she took it! My mind went 100,000,000 miles an hour, and I was in total shock! The behavior began to subside, and beautiful Anne’s breathing got better, and her hands returned to a normal color. By grace, she lived.
I remember her asking me to stay with her in her room, and I remember telling her I’m not going to leave. I must know you’re going to be Ok. I did not realize her brain had been hijacked completely by the bottle of pills – OxyContin – given to her by the nurse at the hospital, but prescribed by her doctor, my friend, her OB-GYN, after she had her sweet baby. My beautiful Anne was never the same again. This is her story, our story, the entire family’s story, the entire world’s story.
