Morphine

Wayne Russell left a Washington hospital yesterday with medicine to treat his infant son. But he had mistakenly been given a potentially deadly dose of morphine -- and he didn't know it until he arrived at his in-laws' house in Pennsylvania, 240 miles away.Warned by doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who knew where the Russells were headed, police in Maryland and Pennsylvania tried to track down the family's blue Isuzu.Authorities broadcast a frantic message saying the child "will surely die" if given a large dose of the drug.

EMMITSBURG -- An accidental overdose -- a combination of alcohol and morphine -- caused the death of a Mount St. Mary's College student April 4, according to the coroner in nearby Adams County, Pa.Friends and roommates had told authorities that the victim, 21-year-old Michael L'Heureux of Camp Springs, had ingested morphine and consumed 20 beers in 12 hours before falling asleep on the floor.When they tried to awaken him, they found that he had vomited during the night and his heart was not beating.

A baby who became ill after it was mistakenly given morphine at Anne Arundel Medical Center was sent home during the weekend, leaving one of the three newborns from the Jan. 31 incident in the critical-care nursery.The baby went home Saturday and is "A-OK," said Carolyn Shenk, a spokeswoman for the Annapolis hospital. The newborn, which the hospital has declined to identify in any way, had been hospitalized in stable condition since the incident.The first baby was sent home Feb. 6. The third baby remains in stable condition and will be hospitalized for several more months because it was premature and below normal birth weight, Ms. Shenk said.

A pharmacist accused of accidentally drugging three newborns with morphine at Anne Arundel Medical Center in January was placed on probation but avoided a criminal conviction yesterday in county Circuit Court.Susan E. Kron, 46, was given probation before judgment and ordered by Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. to serve 30 days of unsupervised probation.She was found guilty of practicing pharmacy without a license, ++ but the conviction will be stricken from the court record after she completes probation, Assistant State's Attorney Michael Bergeson said.

A baby who became ill after it was mistakenly given morphine at Anne Arundel Medical Center was sent home during the weekend, leaving one of the three newborns from the Jan. 31 incident in the critical-care nursery.The baby went home Saturday and is "A-OK," said Carolyn Shenk, a spokeswoman for the Annapolis hospital.The newborn, which the hospital has declined to identify in any way, had been hospitalized in stable condition since the incident.The first baby was sent home Feb. 6. The third baby remains in stable condition and will be hospitalized for several more months because it was premature and below normal birth weight, Ms. Shenk said.

Susan E. Kron, a former Anne Arundel Medical Center employee accused of giving three newborns dangerous doses of morphine last month, plans to fight criminal charges and continue her work as a pharmacist, her lawyer said yesterday.Ms. Kron, 45, of Crofton was charged last week with reckless endangerment and practicing without a license after hospital administrators accused her of accidentally drugging three newborns in the critical-care nursery.The babies were placed on ventilators Jan. 31 after Ms. Kron is alleged to have filled at least six syringes with morphine instead of heparin, a common blood thinner used to flush intravenous tubes, hospital officials said.

HAMPTON, Va. -- Megan McClave didn't want to take her medicine.It tasted "yucky" she said, and the 8-year-old spit it out. On the second try, she managed to take about half.Megan kissed her father good night and slipped off to sleep.By morning, July 18, she was dead.Her mother, Johnda McClave Thompson, who lives in Westminster, said Megan was born in West Virginia but the family moved to Randallstownwhen she was less than a year old."I just want people to know what happened to her, to know these things can happen and watch out," said Mrs. Thompson.

The war on drugs has caused untold pain and suffering for millions of people. We're not talking about drug pushers or junkies. Innocent people in pain are being punished for society's hysterical fear of addiction.A new study has confirmed what pain experts have long been saying: Cancer patients are too often undertreated for severe pain caused by metastatic or recurrent disease.A recent case confirms the tragedy that occurs daily in hospitals across the country.A physician who takes occasional night duty in a veterans hospital was called in to look after a patient in extreme pain.

A quarter of a million dollars worth of morphine was seized yesterday from an apartment that police believe was the base for a large West Baltimore drug-distribution ring, narcotics officers said.Western District drug enforcement officers raided the apartment in the 300 block of W. Monument St. about 2:40 p.m. and found roughly 1 pound of unpackaged morphine and 5,100 small glassine bags containing morphine, police said. The glassine bags appeared to be ready for sale on the street and would fetch about $20 apiece, police said.

Improperly stored drugs foundAdministrators of a Pocomoke City nursing home now say a search last month for improperly stored prescription drugs in a nursing director's office turned up two different forms of morphine.The search was prompted by rumors that a patient at Hartley Hall Nursing Home who died Jan. 29 may have been given a lethal dose of Roxanol, a powerful prescription painkiller.Hartley Hall Administrator Rebecca L. Sutton said officials searched offices at the home and found two bottles labeled Roxanol, which is liquid and given orally, and 13 smaller containers of injectable morphine.

Clinton McCracken and Carrie John knew all about addictions and obsessive behavior. Both worked as postdoctoral research fellows at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and earlier this year published their conclusions from a study of "compulsions and habit formation." But their research might have taken too personal a turn. John, 29, a Wake Forest University graduate with a doctorate in physiology and pharmacology, died Sunday after apparently injecting herself with what McCracken called a "bad" batch of buprenorphine, a narcotic known on the street as "bupe" and commonly used to treat heroin addiction.

A man suspected of posing as a physician and stealing a morphine-administering patch from a patient at a Northwest Baltimore medical facility has been arrested on charges of assault and robbery, city police said yesterday. Aleksandr Dzhanashvili, 31, of the first block of Stonehenge Circle in Pikesville was charged in a warrant with assault and robbery. He was arrested Wednesday by members of the Regional Warrant Apprehension Task Force shortly after he entered Harbor Hospital in South Baltimore, police said.

In a tiny laboratory in Germany, an obscure young pharmacist's apprentice managed to concentrate the power of poppies into crystals that could control coughs, ease pain and tease users into a pleasant slumber. Friedrich Sertuerner, 22, published a paper announcing his discovery in 1805. He was ignored. So he went back to his experiments, injecting dogs with the drug he had extracted from opium and doping himself and his buddies. A dozen years later he published again, this time naming his discovery after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams.

I go to the pain center at our local hospital, and a few times a year we are given a urine test. Last week my urine test came out positive for morphine, and since I don't take morphine, I was wondering what could cause this result. I have a lemon poppy-seed muffin and a cup of coffee for breakfast, a cheese sandwich for lunch with fruit and a normal dinner. I don't take illegal drugs! Your poppy-seed muffin is the most likely culprit. Sensitive drug tests can pick up traces of opium in the poppy seeds, even though you can't get high on a muffin or bagel.

William Steig, 95, a prolific illustrator for The New Yorker known as the "King of Cartoons" for his award-winning, best-selling children's books including Shrek, died of natural causes of Friday at his home in Boston. Mr. Steig combined a child's innocent eye with idiosyncratic line to create a wonderful world of animal characters for his books and Edwardian-era dandies in his drawings. His 1990 book about a green monster, Shrek, was made into the hit film that in 2002 became the first winner of an Oscar in the new category of best animated feature.

THE WHOLE unhappy episode in Moscow involving Chechens and hostages and knockout gas and the bodies of 116 innocent people was so dispiriting in part because it seemed each side was fatally playing the role long ago assigned to it. First, Chechen gunmen (and gunwomen, in this case) launch a brazen and intolerable attack, one that fully justifies a strong Russian response. But then that response, when it comes, is outrageously violent and indiscriminate, and most of those who suffer from it are completely blameless.

As angry officials of a Crownsville drug and alcohol treatment center for poor people looked on, their once-trusted ex-bookkeeper and her husband were ordered yesterday to spend a weekend in jail and to repay the nearly $60,000 they stole. County Circuit Judge Joseph P. Manck also sentenced Sherry Ann and Charles Trabing of Arnold to six months of house arrest and five years of probation in lieu of 18 months in jail for their theft from Hope House. The couple used Hope House credit cards to make thousands of dollars in personal purchases from Home Depot, Staples and Texaco.

The Baltimore metropolitan area ranks second in the nation for heroin and morphine abuse, with 227 emergency department visits per 100,000 residents. Figures are from 2000. Heroin/morphine emergency visits Metro area per 100,000 population Rank Newark, N.J. 238 1 Baltimore 227 2 Chicago 208 3 San Francisco 170 4 New York 128 5 Seattle 103 6 Boston 97 7 Philadelphia 81 8 New Orleans 77 9 Detroit 75 10 SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

LOS ANGELES - It was the last thing I had to do before leaving. Earlier that day I had walked into my parents' bedroom to get something out of their closet. Dad had said "Hiya, Philly!" It stopped me in my tracks. It was the clearest thing he had said in weeks. By that time the cancer had so ravaged his brain that clear speech, much less thought, was all but impossible. But there it was, "Hiya, Philly!" Just like when I was a little kid. Dad slurred the "Ph" sound a little, but aside from that, and his obvious ill appearance - bald head, beard, swollen features - it was pure Dad. Even then, after nearly a year of Hell - chemotherapy, feeling awful all the time, pain, morphine, moaning for hours some nights - even then, Dad was being strong for me. The part of him that always had to be positive, chipper, upbeat, the part of him that came from his mother, was still alive, somewhere, somehow.

IT WAS LIKE WAITING for a bus. The holding area for surgery, which doubles as the recovery room, was packed. Family members were sprawled on plastic chairs as stretchers moved in and out. A sea of green scrub suits rushed around directing traffic. "Hello. I'm from pain control." I was startled as this doctor pulled back the curtain. "I am an anesthesiologist, and I'm here to discuss your options for handling the pain after surgery." So began my most extraordinary drug trip, the most intense since controlled substances carried a generation of goofballs like me into the darkness or light or wherever it was we were traveling in any given moment so long ago. My choices this time: an epidural block, familiar to anyone who has spent time in labor and delivery rooms, or a peculiar device for self-administering a liberal dose of morphine every six minutes.