A fgantasy illness killed my girl
My bubbly drama queen spiralled into painkiller addiction…
My little girl Sarah sat on a stool, waving her arms about wildly.
‘I’ll save you!’ she shouted. ‘You’re drowning in the sea, Mummy. Get off the carpet and onto my boat!’ I giggled. Sarah was a dreamer, had such a vivid imagination. She could play for hours, lost in her own little fantasy world.
She was the second of my three children and only daughter, so we were close.
Sarah grew up to be very loving and affectionate. At 17, she had a little boy. Her relationship didn’t work out, so she lived with me before getting her own place.
But we soon realised she was struggling.
Sarah adored her son, but just wasn’t ready for the responsibility of being a mum.
She was still a dreamer, a child herself.
Sadly, social services took her son into care, leaving Sarah, then 21, totally heartbroken.
I kept a close eye on her, knew it was tough.
A couple of months later, Sarah began complaining of bladder problems.
She was back and forth to the doctor and hospital, had endless tests.
Then she began to complain of different aches and pains. One day it was her head or chest, another time, her back.
Is she making it up? I worried.
She’d been such a healthy girl, now suddenly she was always ill.
Every time I popped in, she’d have a doctor’s appointment, or a scan to arrange. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. I wondered if she’d fabricated symptoms as a way of coping with losing her son. Perhaps using her illness as the reason she couldn’t look after him, hiding from what had happened...
I knew that Sarah was ashamed that social services had stepped in. I tried to be supportive. ‘Nobody is judging you,’ I promised her.
Yet her symptoms just kept coming. Soon, Sarah was Googling her symptoms, diagnosing herself, which is so dangerous.
But she thought she knew more than doctors.
‘I have Fowler’s syndrome,’ she announced one day. ‘It’s a bladder problem.’ She even started a support group online for other women. People would say how wonderful she was, how much she’d helped them.
She even contacted Kim Kardashian, asking for help with funds.
Sarah was always at the hospital... I couldn’t work out what was going on. If she didn’t get an answer from one, she’d discharge herself and go to another. When the paramedics arrived at her home, she’d go into drama-queen mode – like she was putting on an act. I was beside myself. Then she was blacklisted from one hospital and would ask me to call on her behalf. ‘Please!’ she’d beg. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘We can’t carry on with this pretence. We need to talk about why you’re doing this.’ But Sarah would get angry, shut me out. She just wouldn’t listen. Then I found she had stacks of painkillers at her house, a whole bin bag full of pills. ‘These pills will harm you,’ I sobbed. But she panicked if
She’d been such a healthy girl, now she was always ill
we tried to take them away.
She persuaded one doctor to give her some morphine patches and used them far too much.
Several times, she collapsed of an overdose, was rushed to hospital. I was worried sick.
I asked doctors to get her some psychiatric help, but a referral was declined as it wasn’t considered urgent.
Desperate, I offered to pay privately, but Sarah refused.
‘I am ill,’ she insisted. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’
Over 2015, she moved in with me so I could watch her.
But her addiction was out of control.
And then, sadly, my worst fear was realised…
Sarah had taken so many painkillers that she’d become ill for real.
Her body had swelled and she was struggling to breathe.
Sarah was admitted to hospital for several weeks.
Discharged last August, she insisted on going back to her flat, refused our help.
Concerned, we arranged for carers to go in.
A few days later, a support worker arrived one morning and found Sarah’s lifeless body. She was dead. ‘No!’ I wept, breaking down in tears when Sarah’s father
phoned me to break the devastating news.
I’d known this could happen, how poorly Sarah was... But the shock hit me hard. Sarah was just 24, and my only daughter.
Hearts shattered, we held a funeral, said a heartbreaking goodbye to our girl.
In March this year, there was an inquest into Sarah’s death.
Her GP said she was concerned Sarah was addicted to opiate-based painkillers.
She’d made a note in her records advising caution in prescribing these drugs.
But a toxicology report found Sarah had a cocktail of medication in her system when she died.
Individually, each dose would’ve been survivable, but the combination of all three had killed her.
The coroner recorded a verdict of drug-related death. It was a cruel irony. The painkillers she’d taken for her fantasy illnesses had ended up killing her. I miss Sarah every day. But at least my drama queen is finally at peace, having sweet dreams...