"The Foxborough woman could tell that her son had been using again. On that November day in 2011, he was hyper and overly affectionate. “Dear mother,” he called her.
She knew that he was at risk of an overdose. The weeks the 21-year-old had gone without heroin, as the family worked to get him into a treatment program, weakened his tolerance for the drug. When she awoke that night to screams, she was ready, as ready as she could be.
Her husband had checked on their son and found that he was not breathing. As he dragged the young man’s limp body from the bed to begin rescue breathing, their daughter dialed 911, and the mother sprayed a heroin antidote called naloxone into each nostril. Then the family waited, as precious moments passed, for a breath or a groan, a sign that the drug was working."
After the anecdotal lead, the article discusses the issue and the solutions that the medical community is finding. My favorite part about this article is that after the issue is explained and all the problems identified, the article goes back to the anecdotal story to finish it.
"The Foxborough mother learned to use naloxone at her first Learn to Cope meeting in summer 2011, days after her son admitted to his parents that he was using heroin. She kept it close by, on top of her refrigerator, until the day they needed it.
When she first administered the drug, her son was not responding."
So cool! I've seen it done in essays and novels plenty of times, but I can't think of another time when a news article did it so successfully!
The story is by Chelsea Conaboy of The Boston Globe. I'm gunna be keeping an eye out for more of her stuff!
Here's the URL: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/03/02/nasal-spray-gives-families-power-reverse-overdose/gp9mARCC3jZ2NJ7u0aB99M/story.html?camp=newsletter
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