NC Witness Details Mother's Outbreak Death

 

By Walter F. Roche Jr.

BOSTON-The daughter of an outbreak victim whose death first alerted health officials to the fact that a growing public health tragedy was not limited to Tennessee, says her mother hoped her death would help others to survive.
 Anna Allred testified for the prosecution in the racketeering and 2nd degree murder trial of Glenn Chin, who was a supervising pharmacist at the company blamed for the outbreak.
Alfred's mother, Elwina Shaw, was the first outbreak victim to be stricken who had not been injected with a fungus laden steroid  at a Nashville clinic. Until her death in October of 2012, all the victims had been treated at the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center.
Allred said her mother knew she would not survive but agreed to forego any treatment with pain or other medications which might make it more difficult for health professionals to figure out exactly what was sickening and killing a growing number of victims.
She said her mother became the 11th outbreak victim to die. That total would eventually climb to 76. They were among 778 patients sickened after being injected with methylprednisolone acetate from the now defunct New England Compounding Center.
"She insisted  they do a spinal tap," Allred said, adding that her mother "became sick almost immediately" after getting the third in a series of injections at a High Point, N.C. pain clinic.
While the third shot made her sick, the first two provided no relief, Allred said.
She said the spinal tap showed a "very milky" spinal fluid, an indication of a severe infection.
One of her mother's last requests, Allred said,  was that an autopsy be performed in hopes that the results would help the other victims.
In other testimony Tuesday, a Michigan Medical Examiner, Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen, provided details on the autopsies performed on 11 victims who were injected at a local pain clinic. He described how the fungus, exserohelium rostratum, penetrated a protective layer of the spine and then traveled to the brains of victims.
Once in the brain, he said the fungus, which "likes blood vessels," attacked them, rupturing some and blocking others. The results were strokes and other brain damage. In some cases the spinal chord itself was damaged.
Jentzen walked jurors through the cases his office handled including Donna Kruzich, Karina Baxter and Lyn LaPerriere. Chin has been charged with second degree murder in theirs and 22 other outbreak deaths.
Also testifying was a former NECC clean room worker, Derek Carvalho, who said that one of his fellow workers was acting as a registered pharmacy technician even though his registration had been revoked. He said the technician used the name and password of then NECC President Barry Cadden to sign into the company computer system.
Cadden is serving a nine year prison sentence following his conviction on racketeering and mail fraud charges.
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