[Vision2020] Too Many Prescriptions, Too Little Talk

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of the Army Times at:

http:/www.ArmyTimes.com

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Too many prescriptions, too little talk
By Andrew Tilghman, Army Times Reporter

Army Warrant Officer Judson Mount was taking several med­ications
simultaneously while recovering from severe shrapnel wounds at the Warrior
Transition Unit in San Antonio.

The painkiller Tramadol and the antidepressant Zoloft were a high-risk
combination, medical experts say, and it required close supervision.

But Mount was dead of an acci­dental drug overdose in the WTU barracks for
two days before anyone found the married father of two.

The former enlisted tank com­mander who deployed to Iraq twice was found,
forgotten and alone, on April 7, 2009, in his room next to several jars of
pills. The cause of death was an accidental overdose of Tramadol. The
“contributory effects” of the antidepressant “could not be excluded,”
according to the military autopsy report.

Whatever killed her son, Joyce Mount, a 63-year-old retired bank worker in
Tennessee, does not blame the Army.

“It was a person — a pharmacist or a doctor or something — not the Army,”
said Mount, whose father was a retired Air Force senior master sergeant.
“The Army’s been good to me. They’ve been good to all of us. They were
here at the funeral. But I feel like some­where in the system, somebody
has failed or messed up.” WO1 Mount was one of at least 32 service members
to die from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs while under the
care of what are supposed to be the military’s most highly supervised
medical units during the past three years.

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"The Army’s been good to me. ... But I feel like somewhere in the system,
somebody has failed or messed up."

Name: Joyce Mount. Why she said it: Her son, a warrant officer, was dead
of an accidental drug overdose in a Warrior Transition Unit barracks (in
San Antonio, Texas) for two days before anyone found him.

http://tinyurl.com/WO1-Mount

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Dead for TWO DAYS, not in some remote battalion aid station in
Afghanistan, but in a medical hold unit barracks IN SAN ANTONIO,
TEXAS!!!!!!!!!!!!

How many more before we decide to cut our losses and bring them home?

Pro patria,

Tom Hansen
SFC, US Army (Retired)
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the
tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.