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Just before Richards’ death, the couple had planned to make a fresh start, Raechel Richards said. They were bidding on houses in Florida, where Rob Richards <\/b>had already registered for classes at Valencia Community College in Orlando. After the move, he planned to stop taking his prescription medications in favor of trying more natural pain management, such as acupuncture or chiropractic treatment, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\nRaechel Richards said her husband’s doctors had adjusted his pain medications about three weeks before he died, though she is unsure why they had done so. Opana was among the new drugs, and the couple had already noticed some new side effects.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A staff member at Johnston Pain Management said the office was unable to comment on any patient. The group’s website cites its opioid prescription policy, however, which indicates it screens patients frequently for illicit drug use and often requires close follow-up for a period following prescription of an opioid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\n“He had been sweating profusely but not exerting himself in any way. He’d be sweating but his skin would be really white and pale and cold to the touch,” Raechel Richards said in a Nov. 24 interview. “There was one instance [three days before his death] where I was in a truck with him, and I was driving and he was talking to me, but in the middle of a sentence he just passed out.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On Aug. 13, Raechel Richards left for her job as a real estate broker <\/b>as she typically did and returned several hours later <\/b>to find Rob on the kitchen floor, where he had apparently collapsed after taking a shower.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\nRichards’ autopsy indicates that 14 pills of Opana were missing from a prescription that had been filled five days prior at nearby Camp Lejeune. He’d been prescribed three 10-milligram pills per day. Both Raechel and her lawyer, Guy Womack, said they believe he did not exceed his recommended dosage and had no reason for doing so.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A toxicology report prepared by the office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Raleigh, North Carolina’s capital, revealed no alcohol in Richards’ system at the time of his death, only a small amount of the antidepressant bupropion, which was among the medications recovered from his home. The report did not indicate whether officials screened for less common drugs, such as lithium, which was in Richards’ home and has the potential to interact with other medications, according to a medical expert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\nThe medical documents leave other questions unanswered: It’s unclear, for instance, precisely what Richards was taking in the days leading up to his death. Raechel Richards said her husband was on the antidepressant Abilify, the beta-blocker Propranolol, and the hyperactivity medicine Adderall, in addition to Opana, though she said there could’ve been other medications that she cannot remember.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It’s also unclear whether Rob Richards’ prior heroin use affected his body’s response to any of the medications. A medical expert told Marine Corps Times that using the powerful drug could increase or decrease the potency of legit meds, depending on the condition of one’s liver.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Marine Corps Times made multiple unsuccessful attempts to speak with the medical examiner at Coastal Pathology Associates in Jacksonville, where Richards’ autopsy was conducted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It is possible Richards was among a small number of people who have had a fatal response to the powerful opiate in Opana. A review of the FDA’s adverse event reports database found oxymorphone \u2014 the generic version of Opana \u2014 was implicated in 38 deaths between 2004 and 2013, although nearly all the patients also were found to be taking other medications and at least two of the deaths were known suicides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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For Opana specifically, the FDA has 13 separate adverse event reports of death involving the medication, dating from 2007 to 2012.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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An FDA adverse event report containing drug information does not mean the medication caused the death; it indicates only that patients were known to have taken the medication at the time of their deaths.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Dr. Elspeth Ritchie, the chief clinical officer for the Department of Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C., and a retired Army colonel, said the potency of some pain drugs makes prescribing them a delicate balance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“One of the problems with the opiate medications is there’s a fairly fine line between what decreases pain and what causes you to stop breathing,” she said. “It could be that [Rob Richards] had the prescribed dose, or it could be that he took too many.”<\/p>\n
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Raechel Richards and her attorney said they are considering their options to determine what actions, if any, to take in the wake of Rob Richards’ death. Privately, though, Raechel Richards said she has reached out to other combat veterans, asking them to check the list of medications they’re on in order to evaluate possible risks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“It’s something I’m very passionate about, raising awareness,” she said. “Just because a doctor tells you to take a medicine doesn’t mean you should be taking it.”<\/p>\n
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By: <\/span> Hope Hodge Seck<\/a> <\/span><\/p>\nStaff writer Patricia Kime contributed to this report.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Retrieved from: https:\/\/www.marinecorpstimes.com\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2014\/12\/01\/marine-sniper-rob-richards-died-from-drug-toxicity-autopsy\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marine sniper Rob Richards died from drug toxicity: autopsy The sudden death of a Marine Corps combat veteran after his controversial exit from the military was a result of drug toxicity from one of his prescriptions, according to a newly published autopsy report. Rob Richards, 28, was found dead in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iwaslutz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lutzlivetotell.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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