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News Articles >> Avandia Experiment may have Killed Mom
Avandia Experiment may have Killed Mom
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| March 17, 2008. By Corey Van't Haaff |  RSS  Del.icio.us  Seed Newsvine  Facebook |
Memphis, TN: When Sharon's mom first started taking Avandia for her diabetes, the drug was still experimental. Now, Sharon's mom is dead from congestive heart failure and Sharon herself is worried, after having taken Avandia for more than a year for her own diabetes.
"My mom died March 20, 2002," said Sharon. She had been diagnosed with diabetes about 15 years earlier and had been taking a number of different drugs including sulfides which her body rejected. Nothing could get her diabetes under control until she signed up for an experimental pharmaceutical research program. She received her drugs for free and believed she was helping other people.
"Before Avandia was even on the market for sale, she was part of a study. I was worried about it all along; it was so hush-hush. She would only say how wonderful it was to be a catalyst to help other people. She was very conscious of that," said Sharon.
"I asked her, 'what if a drug kills you?' and she said it might save a lot of people's lives. That was the way she thought about it. She was on Avandia for quite a while."
The problem, said Sharon, was that the Avandia brought her mom's blood sugar into perfect condition."Mom swore by it all the way to her death," she said. "After her first congestive heart failure, they didn't take her off Avandia. They didn't try something different. Now, so many other people were taking it—it was a prescription—we thought it was safe," she said.
"The second time, the congestive heart failure killed her," said Sharon.
Sharon went to visit her mom in 2000, two years before her death; after the first congestive heart failure but before the second. "She seemed not to be doing well," she said. "Her blood sugar was fine but she was having problems breathing, lethargy. She spent most of the time lying down. I was there for ten days and she was lying down. She was active before the Avandia. She was tough, resilient. She had nine kids and had to juggle us all."
When Sharon was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, she, too, was put on sulfides and her body also rejected these drugs. The side effects were overwhelming and the combination of drugs for the diabetes and drugs for the side effects all intermingled in a very bad way.
Her own doctor said he wouldn't put her on Avandia as there hadn't been enough study done and he was concerned with too much damage to the liver and heart. He said he just didn't trust it. Sharon never got her blood sugar under control and after her mom died, she moved to Texas to assist with the estate.
"I went to a doctor there when I moved there and he put me on Avandia and took me off the other drugs. I was on Avandia for a year and a half."
Then, when she moved to Tennessee, a new doctor took her off the Avandia and put her on only two drugs, one she took at night and one she took before meals. "It was the first time since my diagnosis that I was under control," she said.
But she is worried. She watched her mom, who had been on Avandia for between three and five years, die from congestive heart failure, where all her organs shut down. Her mom was only 65, barely old enough to collect social security she said.
"I am really concerned," she said. "For my own sake, I was on it for a year and a half. If there is fall-out in the future, I want to know which direction to go in to save my life."
Her sister also has diabetes, her two nieces have it, and she is worried about grandchildren. After her mom's first congestive heart failure, her family couldn't make the point to doctors to take her mom off of Avandia and her mom stayed on it until her death.
"I'd like to know," she said. "I want to know what killed mom and why she was fine until she went on Avandia. All I know is mom was healthy as a horse."
In fact, on March 3, a few days before her mom died, Sharon called her mom and they talked for over an hour. Her mother felt she was going to die and the last thing she said to Sharon was that if she had things to do over again, she would never again do that to her body. She said her body was giving her warning signs that taking the drugs was not safe.
"There's no reason for me to die; no reason for me to be this ill," Sharon said her mom kept saying. "She was dead at 65. Now I am 54. Does this mean I only have ten years to live? I want to know because I took Avandia I don't know the consequences for me," Sharon said.
Sharon deserves the answer to her question. Just how much damage has Avandia done to Sharon and people like her? These people trusted that Avandia would help them. Now, they need to know if Avandia will kill them.
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