Duragesic: "If I Went to Sleep I Would Have Died"

Binghamton, NYIn 2003, Pattie`s doctor prescribed her the duragesic patch for severe neck pain. However, the patch nearly cost Patty her life. If she hadn`t had the good sense to call her doctor as she was experiencing a life threatening reaction to the drug, she would have died.

Pattie has degenerative disc disease, and her doctor had told her to put two patches on as needed. "I think I got up in the middle of the night and put a couple of patches on because the pain was so bad," Pattie said. "When I woke up in the morning I felt extremely tired, and was having real difficulty breathing. I felt like I had a 100 pound weight on my chest. And I threw up. I was literally staggering around the house. All I wanted to do was go back to bed. But for some reason, I thought I'd better call my doctor."

This decision saved her life. Pattie was home alone, but she managed to call her doctor's office, and they, in turn, called an ambulance. The first person to arrive on the scene was Pattie's neighbor, a trained emergency medicine technician. He tried to keep her calm until the ambulance arrived. When the paramedics did arrive they immediately put Pattie on oxygen and got her to the hospital in less than 15 minutes.

"When I arrived at the hospital they administered another drug and I went from having respiratory distress to respiratory failure," she said. "The next day I was told that the Duragesic went into my system too quickly." In fact, the doctors stripped Pattie looking for additional patches. She had so much drug in her system, they couldn't believe it had come from just two patches. "My mother was at the hospital with me, and she remembers this but I don't," she said. Pattie spent the next two days in hospital.

"This was the most horrible experience of my life," Pattie said. "I was so sick. I had no idea what was happening. While I was in the hospital, the doctors told me that it was a good thing I didn't go to sleep, because if I had, I would likely not have woken up."
Now Pattie's medical records show that she's allergic to Duragesic. But when she did some research, reading other people's accounts of adverse events while on the patch, she recognized the symptoms. "I had every symptom that was associated with the recalled patches. I felt like I was dying of an overdose," she said.

Pattie has no idea if the Duragesic patches she used were part of the recall. When the ambulance pulled up, the paramedics took the patches with them and gave them to the physicians at the hospital. "I don't know what the hospital did with them," she said: she never saw them again.

"I wish the makers of the duragesic patch would have had to pay my medical bill. I was in the intensive care unit--and that was expensive," Pattie said.

Today, Pattie feels very strongly that people should be made aware of the problems with the Duragesic patch. "These companies can't be allowed to get away with this." So Pattie is helping to spread the word. "I went to a local pain clinic, and told many of the people there that they shouldn't be using the patches. I told them what happened to me, and that I could have died. I say 'talk to your doctor about it'. I printed something from the internet and put it up in the spine clinic, so people would know about this. Many people I talk to don't know about the recall or the problems with the patch."