A Medical Trilogy

It was an over-the-counter cold medicine. There were a few with the same ingredient in them, but I was investigating one particular brand whose name I will wisely choose not to mention here.
This product was pulled off the shelves years ago because it contained an element called Phenylpropylene. (Google: phenylpropylene + strokes)

It was one of the first over-the-counter cold medicines you might buy when a cold hits.
It was in my medicine cabinet.
It was in a lot of people's.
Many companies, schools, hospitals kept it stocked in their medicine cabinets for cold relief.
What happened... and this was years ago... it was discovered the phenylpropylene in this medicine caused strokes.

A recall was put in place.
Press releases were sent out.
Doctors were notified.
Products were pulled off some, but not all shelves.
Some companies said they didn't get the recall. Others ignored it.
Either way a whole lot of people of all ages were taken down by strokes caused after they took this cold medicine containing phenylpropylene.

For a while, no one knew what caused these strokes.

It was only when some savvy ER doctors saw the similar brain bleeds in a wide age range of otherwise healthy clients who all had recent colds; then reviewed the medicines the patients had taken; that they figured out phenylpropylene was the culprit.

Until the doctors put two and two together, who knows how many people were taken down... some unable to speak or walk, from strokes due to the ingredient in this medicine.

My job in this investigation was to travel Western Washington and interview the worst of these stroke victims. The youngest was 25, the oldest was 65. One couldn't speak, several couldn't walk, and most couldn't move a side of their body. Some had saved the actual medicines, which I took into evidence. Others had thrown them out.

I recall meeting a logger near Hoquiam, on the Washing Coast. Turns out, the company he worked for gave him the cold medicine when he visited the company nurse. I thought I might stop by the logging company while I was in the area. Sure enough, they had the medicine with Phenylpropylene on the shelf. They told me they never got the recall letter, which I carried with me. The medicines were pulled from the medicine cabinet that day.

There was another medicine I investigated. Lipitor. (Google: Lipitor + "muscle breakdown")
It was taken to lower cholesterol, but it had one nasty side effect. The medication ate away at the leg and arm muscles, causing them to break down... liquefy. The liquefied muscles mass was more like a gooey gel that got stuck in the kidneys. I always imagined it to be like old dirty motor oil stuck in a plug of sludge.
The stuff stuck in the kidneys caused a back up that led to renal failure and death.
And if you did live, you had muscles of goo.

Again, my job was to interview the worst of these victims across Western Washington. I recall one man, a fisherman, who lost use of his leg muscles and lost his career at sea. He saved the original medication bottle he had. I placed it in the evidence bag. His was one more voice in a sea of many heard in a suit against those who ignored the recall.

And the third story in this P.I. trilogy is about Pacemakers...faulty ones placed in patients over a two-year period.
Some of the patients came to the attorney after the Pacemakers, which were defective, shocked and scared them to death.
Others contacted the attorneys after they heard about the recall.

Some still had the defective pacemakers in their chest, wanted them out and wanted the attorneys to hold someone accountable for the bills and pain and suffering incurred in living in fear of their Pacemaker going off at the wrong time. Or, worse, not going off at the right time.

My job, per usual, was to travel the state, visit the worst of the worst... hear the stories from one man young as 21 to another man 79, who kept getting shocked all day long.

The purpose of this trilogy is not to frighten, rather to educate. We think of pills as the be-all and end-all of for cold relief, high blood pressure, cholesterol, pain relief, anxiety, and depression. The question you must ask yourself is this:
When is the alleged "cure" worse than the disease?

And beyond that, there comes a choice where we don't have choice. We need a Pacemaker; we rely on the company that makes it to get it right.

Investigating cases like these is just one of many things Private Investigators do. This job is not about hiding in bushes and catching cheating partners for all of us.

For many PI's, myself included, it's about catching companies that are negligent in their manufacture or distribution of products which cause irreparable harm to countless of innocent people. And then, making those companies pay to make our clients well again.