Mum died after she ‘self medicated’ for her unbearable pain
A Mum-of-two who suffered from severe haemorrhoids tragically died after an accidental overdose on painkillers.
Louise Waller, 39, was admitted to Hull Royal Infirmary after suffering from vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain.
When she got to hospital, doctors found that Mrs Waller was seriously ill and had liver failure after taking at least 25 paracetamol tablets on a daily basis for more than four months to manage her pain.
The next day, on September 11, last year, Mrs Waller was transferred to Leeds General Infirmary for treatment, but was not eligible for a liver transplant due to her history of alcoholism.
Sadly, Mrs Waller’s condition worsened and it was also found that she had developed sepsis from a perforated bowel and underlying colitis which led to multi-organ failure.
She went in to a coma and her life support had to be turned off 11 days later
September 22.
A public inquest held at Hull Coroners’ Court heard that Mrs Waller suffered from depression and anxiety and had a history of alcoholism.
Mrs Waller was described by her mother as a “nervous, quiet child” who was loving towards her brothers and sisters.
She married her partner and had son in 1999 and then a daughter in 2012 and were together for 16 years.
He gave evidence to the court that the relationship broke down due to Louise’s addiction to alcohol.
Mr Waller recalled times when the relationship was good and said the pair “had a great life going on holiday together” and going camping and he tried to help her.
He was unsure of the cause of the alcohol addiction, but said she was nervous and suffered from anxiety.
After the split, Mrs Waller met her current partner in May 2017 and he said that their relationship was “really good with occasional and she died on ups and downs” but that they always got back together quickly.
The partner said Louise had a complicated relationship with her family and was seeing a therapist in relation to anxiety and stress and towards the end of her life she suffered with haemorrhoids and had co-codamol for the pain and cream.
He said she was taking pain medication every three hours and had “large handfuls” each time.
Dr Laslo Karsai conducted a postmortem and found the cause of Mrs Waller’s death was multiple organ failure, which had resulted from an overdose of paracetamol.
Assistant coroner Lorraine Harris gave a narrative conclusion.
“I do note that she was suffering from very painful medical conditions and she was given medication, but was also selfmedicating with extreme doses.
“Unbeknown to her, this was causing her irreparable harm.
“Following the evidence, she died by multi-organ failure due to unforeseen paracetamol toxicity to overcome pain from haemorrhoids and undiagnosed colitis.”