75-year-old woman dies in 'torturous, searing pain' after nurse mistakenly gives her fatal dose of a drug used in lethal injection
Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center is under fire after a nurse mistakenly administered a fatal dose of the wrong medication in December last year. The unnamed 75-year-old had visited the hospital for headaches, vision loss, and other related symptoms. Since she was scheduled for a PET scan that could have triggered her claustrophobia, she requested for a small amount of anti-anxiety drug named Versed, instead, was given a deadly dose of Vecuronium, a drug that induces paralysis.
The incident occurred on the day after Christmas in 2017, and it caused the elderly woman to go into cardiac arrest. Even though she would have experienced excruciating pain and breathlessness, she would have lived in pain for a long while, claims Brian Manookian, a Nashville attorney who is involved in the wrongful death suit filed by the family.