Woman in Psychiatric Hospital for 7 Days Given 14 Different Meds in 4 Days
Summary:
Paragraphs five through seven read: "Years of chronic back pain had Beverly fearing an addiction to pain pills."
" 'She wanted to be better for us,' her son Tom said. 'Actually she didn't want our mom to be like that, be a pill head.'
"On March 15th Beverly admitted herself to Kingwood Pines Hospital."
Paragraph 20 reads: " 'And that fatal path, the family's lawsuit alleges began with the hospital,' failing to perform a full, adequate medical history or physical exam.' Instead the lawsuit claims Beverly Campbell was prescribed 17 different medications in just 4 days."
HOUSTON - On the surface, it looks like a happy family get-together, but something's missing: 50-year-old mother and grand mother Beverly Campbell.
"There wasn't anything she wouldn't do for us. We were still her babies," Beverly's daughter Tonya Zepeda said.
But Beverly wasn't dancing through life, she was reeling from it.
"From her brother's death and her mother's death she just had a lot on her mind," Beverly's son Tom Campbell said.
Years of chronic back pain had Beverly fearing an addiction to pain pills.
"She wanted to be better for us," her son Tom said. "Actually she didn't want our mom to be like that, be a pill head."
On March 15th Beverly admitted herself to Kingwood Pines Hospital.
"She went there to get help. This is a person who wasn't forced to get help she wanted to get help," attorney Tommy Hastings said.
"She wanted to get better," Tara Campbell, Beverly's daughter said.
"We knew she wanted to change," Tonya said.
But the indelible change from Beverly's 7-day stay at Kingwood Pines was unexpected and tragic.
"Hug her, bye, expect to be picking her up the next week then you get the call," Tara Campbell said.
That call on March 22 was the hospital. Beverly was unresponsive. CPR was being administered.
"I didn't think that she was dead," Tara said. "That was the last thing that was on my mind."
Beverly's children said they still don't know why their mother died while in the care of Kingwood Pines hospital.
"This is your mom. You should have a right to know what happened," Tara said.
Autopsies usually provide the reason why someone died but not in Beverly's case. The medical examiner’s office gave the same one-word ruling for both the manner and cause of the 50-year-old woman's death:
Undetermined.
"Here's somebody who made the cry in the wilderness, ‘I need help’," Hastings said. "She went to the people that are licensed, supposedly trained to give her the help, and every single one of them not only let her down, they led her to the road to death."
And that fatal path, the family's lawsuit alleges began with the hospital," failing to perform a full, adequate medical history or physical exam." Instead the lawsuit claims Beverly Campbell was prescribed 17 different medications in just 4 days.
"Some of the medications are for multiple purposes different medications for the same purpose none of which she had the conditions," Hastings said.
"We talked to her throughout the week," Tara said. "And she doesn't sound so great."
“A lot of those medications didn't just have mild reactions; they have severe interactions that can cause respiratory depression and can cause people to die," Hastings said.
The lawsuit alleges Beverly's death was "proximately caused by the ill-advised medication regimen and failure to properly monitor and treat her medical problems."
"They said she didn't die there that she didn't die in their bed," Tara said.
Hastings said the hospital's records and the ambulance report contradict each other when it comes to when and where Beverly died.
"According to what they wrote after she died, they were checking her every 15 minutes," Hastings said. "But when paramedics found the body, which was supposed to be dead at most 15 minutes, she was dead well over an hour."
So what does Kingwood Pines Hospital have to say?
"Because of state and federal privacy laws we can not comment on specific patient matters. We can tell you that patient safety is our top priority everyday at Kingwood Pines," a hospital spokeswoman said in a prepared statement to FOX 26 Investigates.
Beverly's kids believe suing the hospital is the only way they'll ever know why their mother died.
"Going from one weekend to being at Chuck E. Cheese with her grand kids, being at her nephew's birthday party, going out to dinner with her kids and grand kids, and then the next weekend just being gone and no one knows why," Tara said.
She wasn't at risk for overdosing," Hastings said. "She wasn't at risk for dying. She wanted a better quality of life and she was mismanaged, mistreated and left to ."