Is it just me?? Accused of being suicidal, with no evidence

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Around six weeks ago, I was shopping in a grocery store for a birthday party that evening. For unknown reasons, I started to become more and more confused, and finally incoherent.

The grocery store manager apparently just wanted me out, so they called a cab to take me home, which they paid for.

The cab dropped me off at my home, but did not stay to see that I actually got inside the door, before leaving.

I collapsed on my front driveway, without having been able to reach my door.

I was unconscious for four hours, till my partner found me almost lifeless, my lips were white, hardly a pulse, and completely unresponsive. Of course she called 911 right away.

I almost died in the ambulance and was rushed to the ER (I don't recall any of this, my partner told me about it after).

They got me back to life in the ER, but my level of consciousness was only minimal during that evening and all through that night.

I can only remember the doctor yelling at me, "WHAT DRUGS DID YOU TAKE?!" .... and I had no clue what they were talking about, and couldn't answer.

They ran a full blood analysis, and found no drugs of any kind in me.

However..... the doctor treating me wrote me up as a "Suicide Attempt" and that I'd tried to overdose on narcotics -- even though no narcotics at all showed up in my analysis. Nobody ever asked me what happened or asked whether I was suicidal, at all.

Later the next day, my partner told me that the two police officers who were among the first respondents to the 911 call, told the ER physician that "We found a lot of drugs scattered all around her where she was found." Yet, they could not say what type of drugs, or how much of it, and claimed they had *lost* all evidence they'd supposedly collected.

What happened here, and why? Does anyone have any insights?

By the way, my hospital record STILL states that I attempted suicide by narcotics overdose.... this is stapled to the results of my analysis showing zero narcotics or anything else in my system, at the time.

Is there any logic to this, and why would cops try to work a drug scam on me? Are doctors actually so stupid or is there some deliberate malice in the system?

Um...

Wat?

WHAT?

I'm so sorry.
I can understand your confusion, but for me the mainquestion is why you passed out in the first place?

I've been in EMS for 10 years, and I've learned one very important thing. While paramedics can go to the ER and say "Not sure what's going on here." Cops have the need to wrap it all up in a nice little package no matter if all the answers are there or not. And when they can't, there is a higher than normal likelihood that they will be a**holes.

That is just weird!!

The initial idea that you might have ingested a dangerous dose of some drug makes sense, because you're a young person found passed out in her driveway, with the police claiming that they had seen drugs. (Did you have your prescription medications on you, perhaps?) Then when the doctors talked to the police, they believed the police, because usually the police don't have any reason to lie about that kind of thing.

I think you probably had a fainting spell, perhaps due to stress or exhaustion. If it was cold when you passed out, you might have had hypothermia as well. You might have fainted from low blood sugar, if you hadn't eaten in a while.

But I also think you should go to a doctor and explain exactly what happened--that you didn't make a suicide attempt, that you weren't on medications (or were only on your regular medication--list type, dose, and when you took them), and that you were confused and then unconscious. Make sure your doctor does a thorough check-up. If it does turn out to be stress-related (and believe me, people truly can pass out just from stress), then that's great, but you need to get checked out properly just in case there is some problem that needs to be treated.

The grocery store manager should have called the EMTs. You were incoherent. That's a medical emergency. But I guess he didn't have the medical training to know that. I would write a polite letter to the store, explaining what happened and requesting that managers receive basic first aid training in case this happens again.

To answer the question....

It turned out in reality I had collapsed of simple dehydration: I'd accidentally forgotten to drink anything in a few days... can't remember exactly, since I forgot!

When they ran an IV, I became rehydrated, and cured the problem.

Meanwhile, due to the police report, they'd added something called Narco-Ban to the IV line, and found that I quickly responded for the better. Since I responded to it, they concluded that I must've had narcotics in my system. Ignoring the 99.5% which was pure saline fluid, focusing attention only on the 0.5% Narco-Ban.

Of course, I'd have responded to anything, or nothing, they added to the IV: it was the ordinary fluid volume and electrolytes that helped me, not whatever they may have added to it.

Bozos!

Do you live in the USA?
If you do, the police come when the ambulance comes to make sure the scene is secure for the EMS persons.
That would take a load of incompetent cops to lose all that evidence.
Not to mention if you had been an opiate overdose, they likely would have shot you with Narcon.

Police collect evidence, not EMS. i would contact the police regarding the matter. What if someone tried to poison or drug you?
They say your toxicology is negative for drugs, yet possibly they didn't test for all the drugs one can be drugged with, just common
drugs that are abused.

Honestly get a lawyer and get that whole mess straightened out. Either you od'ed on Opiates or you didn't.
They aren't supposed to lose evidence.
If you overdosed on opiates, it should say they used Narcon on you in your hospital paperwork i would think. And that is for a severe OD.

On the cops behalf, it may not be a drug scam, yet it sounds very sloppy and could be pure carelessness on their part. I don't know.
I would definitely have a lawyer get to the bottom of it.
If that didn't happen like you describe then what caused you to collapse unconcious? This is the most serious, you could have a condition they didn't check for since the dumbdumbs ems and cops claimed drugs.
What if you need an MRI and say the cause was a seizure?

On the case of a real opiate overdose, your description fits the bill. A lot does not add up.
They are required to have a shrink talk to you in the ER to see if you suicidal or not.
Definitely get a lawyer

The start of the whole incident is concerning. First you start getting confused, and more confused and incoherent until finally you passed out in your driveway.

Are you taking any psych meds?

I had an ex who was on Rispederal among other things, that actually caused her to become incoherent randomly at anytime and pass out pretty much. She wasn't near death though. So it almost sounds like at first it could be a seizure type of thing.

I never trust hospitals... just get a lawyer, it's such a mess it sounds. I've seen doctors in hospitals mess up all the time. They think they are gods and it's disgusting.

As for the cops, they are probably just sloppy and incompetent.
A lawyer should be able to get to the bottom of things. You want to know what caused the incident to begin with.

Was it a seizure or something similar in nature?
Did someone drug you? Perhaps they weren't testing for specific drugs (only illegal ones) they might not test for all drugs, just the basic panels. Sometimes it gets costly testing for specifics.

I have never heard of "Narco-Ban" before, but this does seem like something odd is going on.

That's a perfectly normal response to severe dehydration, first weakness and dizziness and altered mental status then passing out. Unfortunately it is not among the first things suspected for an otherwise healthy-looking person. EMTs are trained to treat the most common things that won't cause harm if they are wrong. Narcan is given in all unresponsive patients. However, all it does is keep the opiates from affecting you anymore. It does not eliminate them from your bloodstream. and the blood tests they do in the ER is for the active compound in opiates and that covers all the narcotics. If they didn't find it, it wasn't there, and the ER morons know that.

My professor asked if I was suicidal because I was unhappy that day... Seriously? Why jump to conclusions...?

If it were me I'd hire a lawyer to get to the bottom of what happened with the hospital and the cops.

Then I'd take the lab report and not the part that says you took opiates and go to the doctor and ask them to please help you get to the bottom of this.

You might ask for an EEG(test for seizures), an MRI, and bloodwork for whatever might cause that aside from dehydration. If it was dehydration you need to be more careful and drink more liquids.

if they really believed you were suicidal they should have had you be seen by a shrink who would evaluate your mental state before they released you. If they didn't they just put that for an easy answer. Frankly I'm not surprised they didn't dig to find out the real cause. As for the lost evidence I'd be suspicious of that.

NTs often go with the next best explenetation and because they are NTs it mostly fit, but we are not...!

I think in ER's they always assume you're on drugs unless you're bleeding out of an artery or your head is detached from your body or something. I passed out at work once and in the ER and they kept asking me, over and over, what drugs I'd taken (which was none). Eventually, they got my blood test results which showed my blood sodium level in the "immanent seizure, brain-damage, coma, or death" range at which point they stopped asking what drugs I'd taken. I think I was under 30 at the time (you look young in your avatar) -- maybe that had something to do with it.

If you've had long-term problems with passing out or getting near to passing out, "dysautonomia" might be something to look up. I went for about 20 years with symptoms without it getting diagnosed (and it only did happen because I researched it myself and demanded the test for it from my doc). For me, it would lead to passing out only in bad conditions, like being dehydrated, in hot weather, or standing for a prolonged time (or all 3). (OTOH, any of those can also cause a normal person to pass out.)

I wonder... like another poster mentioned about cops confidently reporting their 'theories' to ER personnel -- I'm sure that those cops that saw you are still 100% certain that you were on drugs even though they still have no evidence to support their conclusion (and I'm sure they didn't bother to check to find out if they were right). And, in 10 years they'll still think that, even after they've made that same mistake another 300 times, because they'll never find out that they ever got that wrong. I wonder if ER doctors are similar in that they don't often get to find out when they got it wrong unless the patient dies (which I would guess is a minority of the time).

Been there. Was passing out and having seizures regularly (From Dysautonomia + Dehydration) Finally had a friend drag me to the ER. First thing they did was assume I was a drug addict. Then they found out I'm trans, so it changed from Drug addict to "Psychogenic" in a heartbeat. Never mind that I went into tachycardia just from sitting up.

I'm amazed that I didn't die honestly. I went for a few months in severe dehydration. I think the frequent seizures may have given me minor brain damage. That would explain why I seem much more Autistic now than I did before.

If there is one thing that I've learned, it's that Doctors, and Cops do not give a s**t.
(I had a friend who was mugged just outside of an apartment we were living at and when the cops came to interview him they bullied him and tried to force him to say that it didn't happen.)

I would be interested to know how the hospital lab screen for drugs, if they use LC-MS then a new and exotic drug might slip past them and give a false negative. But on the otherhand if they used a test based on a opiate binding receptor then any opiate would test positive. If any of the samples remain then you might want to contact an independant lab.

But it could be expensive,