My 44 year old sister in law died in December. She was a Mormon and
did not drink alcohol. No one who ever knew her ever saw her take a
drink. The autopsy report said her death was "accidental muli-drug
overdose". She was on several medications for bi-polar disorder
(antidepressant etc), and none of these were pain killers or sleeping
pills. Her blood alocohol level (ethanol) was .315. A friend of hers
saw her in the grocery store about 2:30pm. Her daughter arrived home
from school about 3:30pm and saw her mother, who said she was going to
take a nap. Her husband came home at 6:30 and found her dead in the
bathroom. The autopsy/coroner report stated that her husband found
her sitting on the toilet, lid down, head slumped over to the knee, he
tried to rescitate her, and called 911. The coroner report stated
that one empty red wine bottle, cork screw and glass with red wine
residue was found by her body. She weighed between 225 and 250
pounds, and had had a gastric bypass surgery 2 years prior. I looked
at the blood alcohol calculators on the web and she would have had to
have drunk about 4 bottles or over 125 ounces of red wine in 1 - 3
hours to get a blood alcohol level of .315. How could a person who
had a history of never drinking consume that much alcohol without
vomiting or passing out long before that much alcohol was consumed?
The drug levels of her perscription medications were all in the high
end of normal, except for one of the antidepressants which was about
double the high end of normal. Her family is concerned that this
level of alcohol does not make sense. |